Panic Room - Torchwood Style
by Awatere11
Summary: Jack has been caught in an unfortunate position with his Ex-Husband John and if he doesn't prove to his Welshman how truly sorry he is he might have another ex on his hands. The huge, expensive house is the only thing pleasing Ianto right now and Jack can only hope for forgiveness. This is Panic Room with my nastiness ... NO SMUT ...this is purely suspense and cliffies galore
1. Chapter 1

1

Toshiko Sato, a real estate broker, vaults down the sidewalk, she's got a hell of a stride. Jack Harness, fortyish, struggles to keep up with her, she's petite, wafer-thin, pale as a ghost. Ianto, a precocious twenty-fiveish piece of eye-candy, strides to keep up, dribbling a basketball as he goes. The kid's athletic, much younger than Jack, and he looks to more like a child than a lover.

Toshiko reads from a sheet she carries in her bouncing hands, noting who is wearing the pants and holding the wallet in the relationship.

"Seventeen feet wide, fifty five feet deep, forty-two hundred square feet, four floors with a rentable basement apartment, so five altogether, courtyard in back" Toshiko is reading off the piece of paper as she scuttles along.

"Could you slow down a little?" Jack asks as he looks around, finding Ianto looking intently at a bush then scooping out the ball, "Or we could wait for the car..."

"No cars. Feet are faster." Toshiko barks as she pushes them along.

"How many more do we have after this?" Ianto whines, pouting at Jack like a spoilt brat.

"None, there's nothing else, you know how tight the market is." Toshiko answers.

"This is it? I told you on the phone, I have to be moved in under two weeks." Jack says with annoyance, then swings to address his lover, "Ianto, please don't bounce that here. "

"Daddy, it's the sidewalk." Ianto harrumphs, confirming her suspicions and she nods silently.

"Oh, that miserable little prick is already leaving." She mutters as she starts to trot faster, leaving the two men to follow.

They approach a row of brownstones, narrow four story townhouses, nice looking buildings, a hundred years old or more.

Owen, a sour-looking man, has just locked the front door of number 26 and is coming down the steps. He sees them coming. "One day you will learn to respect other people's time, Toshiko, one day you – "

"Owen, I am so sorry, you were a saint to wait for us!" Toshiko gushes and he frowns as he unlocks the door again.

Owen throws open the front door, revealing the airy foyer of the townhouse. The place is completely empty. He talks fast, races through the tour. The three of them come in, Ianto still bouncing his basketball.

"This is the middle of the house, the entry floor, living room over there. The kitchen floors below us and there are two bedroom floors above." Owen is talking in a monotone showing his complete boredom.

The front door closes behind them, with a slam so authoritative it seems to say no one's ever getting out.

Jack tries to get his lover's attention, to tell him to stop bouncing the ball in the house.

"It's an enormous amount of space for the money and I'll be perfectly honest, the family is in no hurry whatsoever." Owen appears not to have noticed the impulsive man.

Jack whispers Ianto's name, but Ianto still ignores him, goes on bouncing the ball.

"I don't have to tell you there is an acute shortage of living space in London right now and this is a highly unique property." Owen stops talking and now frowns at Ianto.

"No ball, kid." Toshiko barks.

Ianto immediately stops bouncing. He wanders into the living room, peers through the big French doors, which look out over the courtyard area. There's another row of brownstones on the next block, and all the patios back up to one another. It looks tranquil out there, oasis in the city.

Ianto leans up against the door, sighs, his breath fogs the window. There is a profound melancholy about him.

Jack watches him, tries to catch eyes with him in the reflection.

Can't.

Owen flings open the door of an old-fashioned cage-style elevator. "Working elevator. Mr. Pearlstine, the previous owner, was disabled the last ten years of his life. Highly unusual, the elevator, you will not find this in ninety percent of brownstones."

"Will they take asking price? I need a two week escrow and I'm already approved for the full amount to be drawn from my trust fund." Jack says as he watches Ianto.

Toshiko turns, gives Jack an "are you insane?" look.

"What say we see the house before we dicker, hmm?" Owen asks, starting up the stairs "I have to warn you, this is exactly the response we expected to get. It's a very emotional property.

As he disappears upstairs, Toshiko turns to Jack, lowers her voice. "Who taught you to negotiate?"

"It's not like Saks', Daddy, you don't have to pay the price on the tag." Ianto snorts as he wafts past.

He gets in the elevator and shakes the door shut with a bang. That boy's got an attitude. Jack takes a deep breath, turns to Toshiko. She brushes her hair behind an ear, her thin hand is shaking.

"I'm sorry. Apartments, and... money, and... this is more my husband's area." Jack huffs, then winces as he digs in his pockets for a prescription pill bottle and some water. "Was. His area. I'm not very good at... "

Toshiko watches as he swallows a pill, waiting for Jack to finish the sentence. "Not very good at what?"

"Things," Jack huffs, "and if I was smarter I might have remembered his ability to get 'things' he wants and I wouldn't now be trying to appease my lovely Welshman who walked in on us. If I don't do something spectacular fast, it's going to get ugly between us. Uglier. "

Toshiko just looks at him, no idea what to say. These two are from different worlds.

"It would be so lovely if I could show the property before I leave!" Owen roars from an upper level and they both start, then move to the stairs.

Owen, Toshiko, and Jack poke their heads in a series of rooms, one after the other, the tour flying by quickly. First, an upstairs bedroom. Nice, roomy, looks out on the courtyard.

"Top floor. Two bedrooms, one bathroom." Owen waves a hand distractedly as Ianto wafts past again.

Another floor, another empty room. The trio passes through.

"Third floor, spare bedroom, den, what have you. Mr. Pearlstine used it as an office." Owen is definitely getting annoyed now, as Ianto wafts past again, openly brushing against him.

"He's talking about Bernard Pearlstine." Toshiko whispers.

Jack shrugs, "who's that?"

"The hotel guy? It's been in the papers lately. His kids are all suing each other over his estate. He was a total recluse, paranoid, rich as hell, he was worth thirty million or something, now it turns out they can't find half of it." She looks furtive "Somebody took something didn't belong to them!"

"I hardly see how family gossip is germane to showing the property." Owen sniffs.

"Stop calling it the property, you sound ridiculous." Toshiko snaps back.

From the hallway, there is a raunching metallic grinding sound, the elevator, and the happy laughter of the young man as he puts it through its paces. Owen winces, speaks as if his mouth hurts when he moves it. "Could he please stop that?"

"KID! NO ELEVATOR!" Toshiko roars and Ianto's grunt is heard.

She looks at Jack and winks.

"And we emerge in the master bedroom." Owen announced as he checks his watch.

Ianto looks around, studying the dimensions of the room. He looks at the far wall, the one that borders the house next door. He looks at the wall that corners it, opposite the window wall. She takes two steps back from it.

"Something's weird." Ianto mutters.

"What?" Toshiko asks with annoyance.

"I don't know, doesn't that corner seem funny to you?" Hhe points to the far end of the wall, near the entrance to the closet. There is a mirrored door that leads to the closet and a mirror on the wall alongside it. "If you look closely, you'll see that the mirrors are raked slightly toward one another, which creates an optical illusion in which the corner of the room appears much closer to the door than it is."

"I was waiting to see if you'd notice!" Owen says with surprise "No one from our office had the slightest idea."

He pushes on the top of the mirror on the wall. It makes a faint vlick, then glides open a few inches off the wall.

He pulls it toward him, opens it all the way, a hundred eighty degrees, and it fastens magnetically to the back of the closed door. There is smooth wall behind it, but if you look closely, there is a faint vertical crack in the wall.

Jack looks at him - what in the world? Even pushes again, twice this time, first at the top, then at the bottom, and the smooth wall clicks ajar.

He pulls it wide open.

Jack and Toshiko step forward, fascinated.

The three of them stand in the open doorway, silhouetted by the sunlight streaming through the bedroom windows behind them.

"It's called a panic room." Owen says for inside the room and he hits a switch and a row of bulbs flick on overhead.

"A what?" Jack gapes.

"A safe room. An inner sanctum. A castle keep, in medieval times." Ianto rolls his eyes as he leans in, "I would call it a hub. Like a centre of operations."

He turned to Jack and cants his head.

"Cool"

Jacks' sold.

.

.

.

.

"Oh, I've seen these..." Toshiko says.

"It's quite in vogue in high end construction right now. One really can't be too careful about home invasion." Owen puffs.

The other two walk inside, but Jack lingers near the door, looking around, studying the neatly arrayed survival supplies - water, food packs, batteries, flashlights, tools, rope, clothes, blankets - you get the idea.

"Hey, this is perfect for you..." Toshiko gushes. "Absolutely! Your alarm goes off, or you hear glass break, or for whatever reason you think someone's broken into your home in the middle of the night. What are you going to do? Call the police and wait until they get here on Tuesday? Traipse downstairs in your sexy little boxer shorts and check it out? I think not!"

"Reinforced steel core walls. Buried phone line, completely separate, not connected to the house's main line and never exposed throughout the house's infrastructure or outside the house - you can call the police; nobody can cut you off. Your own ventilation system, complete with oxygen scrubber, so you've got plenty of fresh air for as long as you like. And a bank of video monitors –" Owen drones as he hits a switch next to a dozen tiny video monitors, revealing a dozen different views of the house. "- covering almost every corner of the house."

Jack nods, starting to sweat. "Makes me nervous."

"Why?" Toshiko asks.

"Ever read any Poe?"

"I don't think so, but I love her album." Toshiko tries and Jack sighs.

" Edgar Allen." Jack says slowly.

The furniture guy?"

"What's to keep them from prying open the door?" Ianto asks suddenly.

Owen reaches past Jack and pushes a red button on the wall behind him. With a sudden bang of steel, a heavy metal door leaps out of a slot in the wall and slams shut, like a submarine hatch.

.

A series of metal latches click into place inside it, from top to bottom, securing it into place.

"Steel, four inches thick." Owen says proudn;t pating the door.

Jack takes a step back. They're now enclosed in the room.

"Everything's spring-loaded, even if the power's out it's fully functional." Owen goes on.

"Open it." Jack demands as he watches Ianto and starts to pale.

"Old Bernie didn't miss a trick with this room, did he?" Toshiko says to Owen.

"Open the door." Jack repeats as he takes a step towards Ianto, who steps back and Jack starts to look spooked.

"And with kids like he's got, no wonder he wanted a place to hide." Toshiko snorts.

"That's highly inappropriate." Oeen grins.

"I said open the door." Jack says loudly as Owen hits a green button and the door groans slowly open, recoiling its massive spring.

"My room." Ianto huffs, "Definitely my room."

Jack stands just outside the door to the panic room, regaining his composure. Not crazy about tight spaces. Which we already knew. The added pain that Ianto was still wanting separate rooms for now.

"That door is a safety hazard." Toshiko points out.

"Not at all." Owen sighs. He points. There's a tiny red beam that shines across the doorway, one at shoulder height. "Infrared. Like the beam in an elevator doorway. Won't let the door close if something's blocking it."

"And one at shin height." Even bends down, blocks the one at shin height with his hand. "Watch"

He reaches up, to push the close button, but with one hand anchored at the floor, he can't quite reach it.

"Push that button for me, will you?" he asks Toshiko.

"Don't!" Jack gasps as Toshiko pushes the close button, nothing happens. Owen pulls his hand put of the beam, takes a step back.

Toshiko pushes the button again.

WHANG!

The metal door rockets shut, the metallic slang reverberating in the room. Almost immediately, the fake piece of wall swings shut, of its own accord, followed a moment later by the mirror, which detaches itself from the back of the closet door and moves silently back into place, closing over the hidden door, making the corner of the room look like a corner again.

As the mirrored door closes, it shows Jack his own reflection. He looks at himself, still rattled. He wipes a trickle of sweat from the side of his face.

.

.

.

.

The same house, two weeks later. The entry floor is piled high with moving boxes. Ianto and Jack lie sprawled out in the middle of the black and white tile, arms and legs splayed wide, exhausted.

They stare up at the ceiling, beat.

"Too many stairs." Ianto sighs.

"Got us in here, didn't I?" Jack answers.

"Shoulda got an apartment." Ianto snorts.

"Well, I know that now." Jack huffs with amusement as his lover's strange mood.

Jack raises his hand to his face; he's got the cell phone in his palm. "Battery's dead."

Jack picks up the wall phone in the kitchen, gets a dial tone. "The phone works. Hey, I hooked up the phone."

"The crowd goes wild." Ianto sighs.

"478..." Jakc says out loud.

"0150." Iano finishes.

Jack finishes dialing. It rings, someone answers. "Perry's Pizza, please hold."

.

.

.

.

Night has fallen. Jack and Ianto sit at a small table in the middle of the kitchen, surrounded by packing boxes. They eat pizza. They chew, silently. Ianto drinks a diet Dr. Pepper. Jack finishes a glass of wine.

Jack's eyes are moist.

Ianto notices.

He notices him noticing, shrugs. "I'm human, what do you want me to do, hide it?"

Ianto looks away, goes back to chewing. After a moment "You fucked him."

"Don't." Jack whispers.

"Or was it the other way round, I was so upset I never noticed who was on top" Ianto snarled, "Well? Is it only me who lays back like a good little bitch?"

Jack looks at him, not sure how to confront the open defiance.

Ianto stares at him for a moment, then goes back to eating.

Jack picks up the bottle of wine.

Ianto's eyes flick over and watch as wine pours into his glass.

Ianto's bedroom is full of unpacked boxes, but his bed has been set up and Ianto is in it, hair wet, pajamas on.

In the master bathroom, Jack soaks in a bath. He is exhausted. He reaches for his wine glass, finishes the last of it.

He stretches for the bottle, which is on the floor next to him. He refills the glass.

Again.


	2. Chapter 2

2

Jack, dressed in an old T-shirt and boxer shorts, stands next to the alarm panel in the master bedroom, reading from an instruction manual.

He's frustrated. He mutters, slurring, a bit drunk. "Bypass non-ready zones... shunt, enter, zone number..."

He tries it, pushing a few buttons, but the alarm panel beeps at him disapprovingly. He's doing something wrong.

He sighs, sits on the floor, gets serious about figuring out the instructions. "Bypass non-ready zones... ah, shunt, enter, shunt again, zone number... wait.."

Sometime later. He seems to have figured it out, and a small light on the panel lights up.

SYSTEM ARMED

The very moment the red light goes on, also in the darkened panic room, where the dozen small video screens all suddenly wink to life, showing a dozen views of the house. Whatever he pushed turned these on too, probably not what he meant to do, but at least he got the alarm on for the night.

The door that leads from the panic room to the master bedroom hangs open. In the middle of the floor in here, somebody has made a small tent of blankets and couch cushions.

Ianto must have been playing here before bed.

Jack puts sheets on his bed in the master bedroom.

He fills a glass of water, puts it on a box he's using for a night table. He plugs in a battery charger for his cell phone, places the phone in the cradle. It chimes. "Charging."

He sets the digital clock, puts it next to the glass of water. It's 12:26.

He gets in bed, his side, the left side.

He lies in the dark, half an acre of empty bed across from him.

2:26.

Jack is in a hard, boozy sleep.

A van pulls up across the street and stops. No movement for a moment, then the driver's door opens and a man climbs out. He wears dark clothes.

The Man closes the door, looks both ways, and starts across the street towards the building. He's carrying a bag of some kind.

He goes to the door, and a key slides into the door, rattle.

But the lock doesn't turn.

The key slides out, back in again, jiggles.

Still won't open the door.

The Man steps away from the door, goes to the kitchen window, which is heavily barred, and peers inside, right at us. Can't see anything, it's darker in here than it is out there.

He turns, looks both ways on the street again, then steps up, onto the window ledge. Now he's reaching up, stretching for something. It drops into view with a metallic clank.

The fire escape.

The Man climbs, his feet disappearing from our field of vision.

A skylight.

The Man in dark clothes is on the roof now. He stops and peers down through the skylight.

He steps across the skylight.

This is not the way he intended to enter.

Here in the hall, just outside Ianto's bedroom, a closet door is ajar it's completely dark. Can't see a thing. But then a sliver of light appears, coming from above. We look up.

There is a ladder that's bolted to the wall in this closet, it leads up to a square panel in the ceiling.

Roof access.

And that roof access panel is moving, ever so slightly, moonlight spilling in as it twists in its setting. A shiny silver something slides through the crack along the edges of the portal.

It slithers along the edge of the hatchway, searching for something. It finds a small round nub in the crack. The silver something stops.

It hums with electricity for a moment, then there is a bright spark and a soft snap.

In the master bedroom, a message appears on the alarm panel:

ZONE 19 DISABLED

In the closet, the silver something withdraws and the roof access panel is removed. A million stars are visible in the night sky above.

And in a moment, this intruder is inside.

The Man peers down, through the open hatchway, then slips through the opening and climbs silently down the ladder.

In bed, Jack stirs.

An alcohol sleep is a restless one, and he's suffering.

He sits up groggily, chugs a glass of water.

Lies down again.

One floor up, the Man steps into the hallway and starts for the stairs, moving quickly and confidently. Knows where he's going, knows what he wants.

He starts down the stairs, happens to glance to the side as he does so.

He freezes.

He's looking in the open doorway of the top floor bathroom, staring hard at something that clearly disturbs him.

A nightlight.

Plugged into an outlet in the baseboard in the bathroom. (For the record, it's the Avengers.)

The Man climbs the stairs again, concerned, goes to the door of the bathroom. He looks from the nightlight to the countertop.

There's a moving box on the countertop.

His eyes widen. This is news to him, bad news.

He takes a step back and a breath. He turns, looks to the end of the hall. His eyes now adjusted to the darkness, he notices something he didn't see before, something coming from under the door to the fourth floor bedroom.

Light. From inside.

From another nightlight.

In the top floor bedroom, a nightlight burns in another outlet.

Nearby, Ianto is asleep in bed, the covers kicked off.

The door to Ianto's bedroom glides open, terribly slowly.

The Man stands in the doorway, staring, aghast, at the mountain of moving boxes piled in the room. His gaze falls on Ianto in the bed.

The Man just stares, beside himself.

His lips mouth a word, soundlessly.

Doesn't take a lip reader to guess it.

In the master bedroom, Jack flops over in bed, facing away from the doorway, really having a rough go of it.

He slept too hard before, now he's awake, his head is killing him, he's really paying the price of four glasses of wine.

He lies still, on his side.

Behind him, the bedroom door moves, silently.

Opening.

The Man stands there, one finger still on the door he's just pushed open. He stares at the sleeping form of Jack on the bed, whose back is to him.

He has no idea he's awake.

Jack lies in bed, eyes wide open, no idea a Man is standing in the doorway to his bedroom.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Noiselessly, the Man moves away, down the hall. The Moment his head disappears down the stairwell Jack flops over again, facing the doorway.

He closes his eyes, gives sleep another try.

The Man walks across the kitchen, shaking his head in exasperation at the packing boxes all around him. He goes to the front window, peers outside.

He reaches for a light switch on his right.

Through the window, we can see the outside light go on. Then off, then on and off again.

Still through the window, we see the side panel door of the van slide open.

Two more men climb out. They are also dressed in dark clothes. They also carry satchels. They walks calmly across the street, grow large in the window as they approach.

The first intruder (who has a name, it's Adam) steps over to the kitchen door, runs his silvery strip through the gap.

Another pop and spark.

ZONE 1 DISABLED

Adam opens the kitchen door, letting the two other guys slip inside.

David is a hulking figure whose back seems to rise up over the top of his slouching head; when he walks it looks like gravity does all the work, just pulling him forward. Sean is much smaller, very high-strung, dresses like a homey, very street and cockney.

They all freeze, staring at the moving boxes.

Sean mutters, "Fuck."

"I know." Adam hisses as David frowns.

"What?"

"Two people asleep upstairs" Adam replied, rubbing his face and Sean gapes.

"Fuck!" Sean splutters and Adam growls for him to keep his voice down as he starts to pace.

"They're not supposed to be here!" Sean whines.

"This was your department, Sean." Adam pointed a finger at him angrily.

"They're not supposed to be here!" Sean repeats still in shock.

"That's why the key didn't work, they changed the locks." Adam said with a groan.

"Fourteen day escrow, man, that's almost three weeks!" Sean was still protesting his innocence, "They shouldn't be here for another week! They don't own this house yet! "

Adam pauses and stares at Sean like he's growing an extra head, "Exactly how is fourteen days almost three weeks? "

"Fourteen business days. Escrow is always business days." Sean whines and Adam face palms, "I mean, right? Isn't it?"

"You're an idiot." Adam says in a flat voice.

David steps forward, shoves Adam with both hands in the chest. "Watch your mouth."

"It's okay, David."

" Who is this guy?" Adam speaks to Sean, ignoring the glowering man.

"David is cool. That's all you need to know."

"This is insane. I'm outta here." Adam snarls as he starts to head for the door and dean grabs at his arm.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute. We can still handle this." Sean looks over at David "Can we still handle this?"

"It's just the man and the kid?"

"Unless Daddy comes back later." Adam snorts.

"Daddy's not coming back" Sean sighs, "it's just the two of them. A gay couple and that kid is no kid, just a whiney toy boy. We're okay, here. We can do this, right?"

"You're fuckin' A we can do this." David sneers.

"Not with me. Not with people." Adam says firmly.

"Forty-five minutes. That's all you said you need. That's like nothing." Sean reminds him.

"He'll call the cops, they'll be here before I get unpacked."

"So we keep an eye on him. David can totally administrate that part." Sean says grandly.

"No problem." David rubs his hands.

"I don't want David to administrate that part." Adam narrows his eyes as he watched the glee in the man's face.

"They won't get hurt." Sean points out.

"What about us? What if he has a gun?" Adam asks.

"David, what in God's name do we do if he has a gun?" Sean gasps theatrically and David pulls up his sweatshirt, revealing a .38 tucked into his belt.

"Asshole." Adam mutters.

"A guy shows you a gun, Adam, and you insult him? Hey, who's the idiot? Huh?" David sneers as he starts to swagger.

"Where did you get this clown?" Adam asks Sean with open anger.

"I met him at the tables, same as you. And frankly, I'm grateful we have a little muscle right about now. " Sean frowns at him, referring to the waiter jobs they have at the casino.

"What tables? I've never seen him before."

"Different tables." Sean shrugs.

" The fuck did you bring a gun for?" Adam demands of David.

"You're welcome." David says grandly.

"Peace out" Adam snorts and he moves for the door. Sean, trying desperately to hold this together, gets there first, blocks the door with his back.

"We can't do it without you, Adam." Sean starts at Adam. David stares at Adam. "It's still a good plan. It's just... got a twist."

"Yeah. Kidnapping." Adam snorts as he waves his arms in anger.

Sean frowns as he considers, "Not if we keep 'em here. You can't kidnap somebody in their own house. It's just breaking and entering, unless we take 'em someplace. Or something like that, I'm pretty sure."

"Pure idiot." Adam sighs.

"I am." Sean sneers "I'm an idiot's son. An idiot's grandson. I'm third- generation idiot. But for once in my life I had a good idea, and I'm not giving up so easy. You are? Are you actually telling me that for the first time in your life you're gonna throw your cards on the table and go home early? I can't believe my eyes. (Adam hesitates) Fourteen million dollars upstairs, Adam. You'll be out of the hole. Your wee gambling problem? Baby, you'll be so far out of the hole you could draw bricks every night for the next twenty years and still shit green. (Adam sways) Come on, Buddy. One more hand."


	3. Chapter 3

3

Jack sits up in bed.

He's bleary, his head feels like someone rested a manhole cover on it.

He gets up in the dark, and staggers off toward the bathroom door, feeling his way with his hands, his eyes not adjusted to the dark.

He steps through the door.

He walks into the bathroom and feels around for a light switch, but can't find it.

He blinks, squints, tries to get his bearings. The only light is a harsh white glow that comes from along one wall, from a bank of tiny video monitors.

He finds the light switch, flicks it on, it nearly blinds him.

He's not in the bathroom.

He's wandered into the panic room by mistake.

He turns around, walks out, leaving the lights on behind him. If only he'd lingered, he'd see what we see.

The three men, still in the kitchen, huddled in a group, silently debating what to do.

Using the light that spills from the open door to the panic room, Jack comes back into the master bedroom and finds the proper door to the bathroom.

Jack snaps the cap off a jug of Advil and dumps three into his palm.

He pops them in his mouth, searches for a glass for water, finds none, bends to the spout for a gulp to wash them down.

He turns to the toilet.

On the monitor, we see the three men leave the kitchen and start up the stairs.

Jack shakes, flushes the toilet.

One floor down, Adam, David, and Sean freeze, just coming up the stairs from the kitchen. They look up, hearing the water rushing through the pipes in the ceiling directly above them.

They stare at the ceiling, following with their eyes as a pair of feet pad across the old creaky floor. Finally, they hear a squeak of bedsprings as Jack climbs back into bed.

They hold a Moment longer, a silence grows.

David reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a ski mask.

He pulls it over his head.

They look at him.

"No face." He whispers.

Adam rolls his eyes. Doesn't know this guy much, but hates him so far. They start across the foyer toward the stairs.

Jack rolls over, to go back to sleep.

He sees he's left the lights on in the panic room. He sighs, gets out of bed, and walks across the floor toward it.

Jack steps into the panic room, raises his hand to the light switch - - and stops, his hand frozen in mid-air.

He cocks his head, looking at something he can't understand.

He blinks.

Takes a step, further into the room.

He stares at the video monitors - at the three men in dark clothes, stealing silently across the foyer.

This can't be. These are just pictures, they have no relation to reality. He drops to his knees, his face inches from the screens, and reaches out to touch them, as if trying to make sure they're really there.

They reach the base of the stairs, Sean in the lead. As he reaches a bend at the base of the stairs, he places one foot short on an angled step and it slips off.

He trips, falls forward.

Watching the video monitors, Jack stares in horror as the image of Sean slipping is verified by the SLAP of his hands on the stairs as he catches himself, audible through the open door to the panic room.

He GASPS.

It is real.

In the living room, Adam's eyes are wide as saucers, staring at Sean as he turns and pulls himself to his feet.

Sean points at David, speaks in an urgent whisper. "Get the toy-boy and keep him there. I'll bring the man up. Gimme."

He holds out his hand for the gun and David gives it to him.

Sean points to Adam "Stay here. Nobody gets past you."

He heads for the stairs. David follows close behind him. Adam stays, reluctant - what the fuck has he gotten himself into?

Jack moves.

Leaps to his feet and dashes out of the room.

Jack races across his bedroom, flies out the door, and bolts up the carpeted stairs, headed for the top floor.

Jack races into Ianto's room, drops onto the bed, and grabs Ianto by the shoulders, trying to rouse him. "Wake up... wake up..."

But he's in a profound sleep and won't wake up.

One floor down, Sean and David reach the third floor landing. Still moving stealthily, Sean heads down the hall for the master bedroom, where he thinks Jack is sleeping. David heads for the stairs that lead to the top floor.

Jack is desperate, still can't wake Ianto. "Wake up...come on, come on..."

He sees a plastic cup on the night table/box, half filled with water. He snatches it and tosses the water in his face.

Now he's awake.

And pissed off.

"WHAT DID YOU DO THAT FOR?!" Ianto roars at his lover.

David, at the base of the stairs that lead to the top floor, hears the shouting. He starts up the stairs, quickly.

On the top floor, Jack is already dragging Ianto out of the room and into the hallway.

Jack and Ianto come out of Ianto's bedroom just as David reaches the top of the stairs at the other end. They're cut off.

.

.

.

.

.

Jack freezes, staring at the hulking ski-masked figure at the end of the hallway.

He thinks, no idea what to do for a second. He looks frantically to his right - the bathroom, dead end.

He looks to his left.

The elevator.

He yanks open the elevator door, throws aside the gate, and races inside with Ianto.

David takes off down the hall, lunging for the elevator.

Jack slams the gate shut and punches the button for the first floor. The elevator moans to life and starts down - slowly.

Ianto looks at him, terrified. "What's going on?!"

"People." Jack pants out "In the house."

As the elevator descends, they see David, through the window in the door, as he drops to his knees, to get a good look at them.

David turns from the elevator, shouts to the open stairwell. "IN THE ELEVATOR! BOTH OF 'EM HEADED TOWARD YOU!"

Sean turns from the open doorway of the master bedroom and races back down the hall, toward the elevator. He reaches the door, peers through the window.

He sees the bare feet of Jack and Ianto, dropping toward him. He grabs the door handle, pulls as hard as he can, but it stays locked, with the elevator moving beyond.

He bangs on the button, hoping the elevator will stop. As Jack and Ianto drop fully into view, he stands there, eye to moving eye with her for a Moment. But the elevator doesn't stop, it keeps going down.

Jack stands frozen, terrified, staring at Sean as they move past him.

Sean has another go at the door, pulling as hard as he can, actually bending the door, but the elevator is still moving, the catch holds fast and the door won't open.

As they pass, his face suddenly disappears, he takes off.

Sean flies down the stairs, to cut them off at the first floor.

"He's going down." Jack points out as he tries to keep himself between Ianto and them.

"That room!" Ianto pushes past and starts pressing buttons frantically.

"What?!"

"PANIC ROOM!" Ianto cried and Jack thinks, then punches the button for three, to go back up. But the elevator continues down. He jabs at it, futilely.

"No. you gotta... " he reaches past him, pushes the STOP button. The elevator jerks to a halt. Then Ianto pushes three. Now the elevator starts to rise.

Jack looks at him, impressed.

In the foyer, Sean freezes, hearing the elevator stop and start again. "HE'S COMING BACK UP TOWARD YOU!"

He takes off up the stairs again. Adam can't take it anymore, he takes off after Sean, following him upstairs.

David, still on the top floor, heads for the stairs, fast.

Sean races back up the stairs. They have Jack and Ianto caught in the middle.

The door to the elevator BANGS open on three, the gate rattles aside, and Jack and Ianto leap out. They take off down the hall, toward the doorway to the master bedroom.

David flies down the stairs, not twenty feet behind them.

Jack and Ianto run through the master bedroom. As he passes the night table, Jack swings an open hand to grab his cell phone from its cradle. But in his haste he starts to pull it out at an angle and the prongs at the bottom stick in the charger.

The phone slips from his fingers, bounces off the corner of the table, glances off his foot, and skitters under the bed.

Ianto turns, looks to the head of the stairs just as Sean turns the corner and David thunders down the steps from four. Jack abandons the phone, grabs Ianto, and they lunge through the open doorway to the panic room.

Sean and David burst through the doorway to the bedroom, just a few steps away.

Jack and Ianto trip over each other coming through the doorway, they tumble to the floor of the panic room, the door wide open behind them. Jack spins around, hurls himself at the red button on the wall –

\- Sean leaps, sailing through the air toward them –

\- Jack slams his open palm on the red button, the massive coiled spring that holds the metal door open is released, the steel barrier leaps forward out of the wall - - and slams shut in a split-second.

Sean slams into the closing metal door, banging his shoulder into it, and slithers to the ground, too late.

Jack rolls over and pulls Ianto into his arms, both of them breathing hard, asking each other if they're okay, scared out of their minds.

But safe.

Jack spots the telephone, the one with the special buried phone line. He lunges for it, snatches it from its cradle, listens for a dial tone.

Nothing there either.

"Damn it!" Jack swore, throwing it.

"It doesn't work?!" Ianto whines with fear.

"Different phone line, I never hooked it up!" he huffs, looks back at Ianto. He seems a bit pale, scared. Jack goes to him, holds him, reassures him.

Sean is slumped at the base of the door, livid, in pain, pounding on it with his fists, screaming "NO!" over and over again, crazy with rage.

David stands in the middle of the room, chest heaving, hands on his knees.

Adam finally walks into the room and stops in the doorway, looks from David to Sean to the door to the panic room, figures out the situation.

"Tell me... tell me they're not in there..." Adam roars with frustration.

The room behind the four inches of reinforced steel, the panic room in which Jack and Ianto kneel in the middle of the floor, holding each other tight is where Adam wants to be.

The Hub of the house.


	4. Chapter 4

4

Very close on the metal door, from inside the panic room. An ear moves slowly into frame, presses against the cold steel.

Listens.

Jack pulls away from the door, shaking his head. "Can't hear a thing."

" What do they want?" Ianto whispers as he scrunches in a ball in the corner.

"I don't know. Rob us. I don't know." Jack answers as he sits back against a wall, looks around, at the tiny room. He's trying not to show how freaked out he is.

"What do we do?" Ianto asks.

"Wait" Jack shrugs.

"What if they get in here?"

"They can't. They can't get in here. No. They can't." Jack is trying to convince himself as much as his love.

"I heard you."

"Feel okay?" Jack turns to crouch by Ianto, reaching out to stroke his face.

"Yeah."

"Shaky?" Jack is now holding a hand to Ianto's forehead as he frowned.

"Nope."

"Chills?"

"Huh uh." Ianto shakes his head sullenly.

He checks his wristwatch, for some reason.

"Don't worry about me." Ianto says, the implications being, worry about yourself.

Ianto crawls over to the bank of video monitors, studies them. Jack crawls over to join him. They scan the screens.

there are a dozen different views of the house. Front stoop. Kitchen. Dining room. Entry floor. Living room. Master bedroom. Den. Top floor bedrooms, both of them. Top two floor hallways. Even one with a shot of the inside of the elevator.

The three intruders are gathered in the living room, standing in a tight circle, having a hell of an argument.

Lots of gesturing, fingers jabbing in chests, but they can't hear a word.

Jack furrows his brow, noticing something interesting to the right of the video monitors. He slides over, studies a panel there with sixteen different buttons and a small grilled area.

"Hey... " Jack mutters and Ianto joins him, looks at the buttons. Each one is labeled with a different room name - den, kitchen, master bedroom, etc. Up in the corner there is a button that says "ALL PAGE," down in the opposite corner there's a button marked "TALK."

Jack looks at Ianto.

"Go ahead."

Jack is reluctant, frightened. Ianto is encouraging, for the first time. "You can do it."

Jack leans forward, clears his throat.

Adam, David, and Sean are standing in the half-darkened living room, in the middle of their argument, when a VOICE booms around them.

" **Excuse me."**

They practically jump out of their shoes, looking around for the source of the voice.

" **The police are on their way."**

Only Adam has remained relatively calm. After he gets over the initial shock, he walks toward the tiny camera that's hidden in an upper corner of the living room wall and stares up at it. David, who has taken off his ski mask, is careful to move out of the camera's range, and turn his back to it.

" **I suggest you leave."**

Adam looks up at the camera and shakes his head, wagging a finger from side to side. He raises a hand, makes a gesture like a telephone, then wags his finger again. The message is clear - you don't have a phone.

Jack is puzzled. "How'd he know that?"

He presses the talk button again.

"Take what you want and get out."

That sounded fairly tough. He looks at the monitor again.

The three of them have an urgent, whispered conference, then they all start patting their pockets for some reason, turning in circles, looking for something.

Jack and Ianto watch them, confused.

Adam holds up a finger to the camera - wait a second - while David and Sean rush off screen, looking for something. Sean returns a Moment later holding something and the three of them hunch over a box, working on something.

After a moment, they break apart and Sean steps up to the camera holding a pad of paper. He shows it to the camera. On the top page, in big block letters, they've written.

WHAT WE WANT

After a suitable pause for reading, he turns to the second page, where four more words are written.

IS IN THAT ROOM.

Ianto gasps and Jack sits back.

"What we want is in that room." Jack repeats what was on the sigh as he sit back to think.

"They're coming in here, aren't they?" Ianto is starting to hyperventilate.

"No, I told you, they can't. It's not a possibility." Jack assures him, then looks over and sees his distress.

Angry, he sits forward and jabs the talk button.

 **What do you know about this room?**

There is more frenzied writing, more arguing, and a first draft of a response torn up. Finally, Sean steps forward with another sign:

MORE THAN YOU.

.

.

.

.

Jack's confidence is ebbing, but he doesn't want to show it. He hits the talk button again.

 **We're not coming out. We're not letting you in. Get out of my house.**

"Say fuck." Ianto demands.

 **Fuck.**

Ianto gapes at him, then rolls his eyes "Get the fuck out of my house."

 **Get the fuck out of my house!**

He clicks off again, looks to Ianto for approval, and gets it, sort of, in Ianto's half-smile. But Ianto's eyes go back to the screen.

"Answer." Ianto mutters.

Jack follows Ianto's eyes back to the screen, where another message is being held up for them.

WE WILL LET YOU GO.

Jack and Ianto speak at the same time.

"Oh, please." Jack scoffs.

"Give me a break." Ianto flops back theatrically.

In the living room, Jack's voice booms from the speaker.

 **Conversation's over.**

With an audible CLICK, he signs off. Adam, David, and Sean stand arrayed beneath the camera, staring up at it, dumbfounded.

"Got him right where you want him, Sean." Adam snorts.

"Shut up."

"When you said you'd let 'em go I thought he'd come running right out for sure." Adam says with exaggeratedly wide eyes.

"Shut up and let me think." Sean snarls and he opens a pack of cigarettes, takes out a joint and lights it.

"I'm afraid to let you think, Sean. Things get worse when you think." Adam growls, then sniffs the air "Oh, that's gonna help."

"Okay, fuckball, you think. What are we gonna do?" Sean says on the exhale.

"What if he called the cops?" David asks.

"He didn't." Adam replies.

"He said he did." Sean points out.

"He lied. Cops woulda been here by now if he called 'em. Besides, Sean cut the phones." Adam goes to the window and stares outside.

He laughs, covers his face.

"What the fuck is funny about this?" David asks with growing anger.

"God." Adam chortles.

"There is not one thing funny here." David shouts angrily.

"Who else but God could think this shit up? I spend ten years building those fucking rooms to keep people out, now I gotta figure out how to get in. God, man, He just loves the irony." Adam sighs.

"Yes. Yes, it's all terribly ironic and amusing." Sean says patronizingly, "You fuck. Now how are you gonna get us into that room?"

"Can't. Whole point. Can't get in the room." Adam shrugs.

"So what the fuck are we supposed to do?!"

"Make them come out. And when they do, that's when we gotta be careful. He can't get out of this house. He can't even think he can get out of this house. We just keep them here and keep them quiet for forty-five minutes. And I don't want Joe Pesci here standing over them with his fat sweaty finger on the trigger. That's a sure way for us to end up with two dead bodies and little puffs of smoke burning out of our heads up in Greenhaven. So we're gonna seal the place up. They wanna hole up in here? Fine, we'll help 'em. Make it impossible for them to leave. Once they come out of that room." Adam takes a breath.

"And why exactly would they want to come out?" Sean asks as he folds his arms.

At the window, Adam notices something sitting just outside the French doors, on the balcony. It's a large outdoor barbecue grill. He thinks, takes a step closer.

He sees a white five gallon tank of some kind underneath the grill.

"Workin' on it." He mutters.


	5. Chapter 5

5

In the panic room, Jack is sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning against a wall, but Ianto is in motion, sorting through shelves, opening drawers. Every drawer has something in it, sealed under plastic. He opens and closes, sorts and lifts lids finding the following:

Waterproof matches and lighters.

Flashlights.

Unopened packages of batteries.

Sealed water bags stamped "PURE FIVE YEARS FROM DATE."

Tinned food.

Flares.

Pillows

fireproof blankets

A complete tool kit.

As Ianto explores, he discovers something in the far wall at the end of the room, down on the floor at eye level.

It's a small round portal, about eight inches across, with a four-pronged clover-like seal. The portal is closed tight, as Ianto pokes and scrapes at it idly with a finger or two, it resists his attempts to crank it open.

Jack notices. "Hey. Relax, okay?"

But Ianto keeps at it, feels along the edges of the portal, then all along the wall, looking for some kind of hidden switch that controls it.

"I mean it, lie down. You get your adrenaline up and you know what's gonna happen." Jack warns and Ianto stops, looks at his lover, who is pale and wan, huddled in the corner.

"Are you freaking out?" Ianto asks.

"Little bit. Yeah." Jack smiles, hoping to calm Ianto by showing some emotion.

Ianto looks around the room. "Small space?"

Jack nods silently.

Ianto looks at him, thinks.

It's not an unfamiliar situation, him needing to comfort his Cariad.

"Why did the chicken cross the road?" Ianto asks.

"What am I, a five year old?" Jack snorts.

"Why did the chicken cross the road?" Ianto repeats calmly.

"I don't know, why?" Jack sighs.

"To prove he wasn't chicken." Ianto deadpans.

Jack tries to push a smile across his face, but it's immediately dashed as he looks back at the video screens. His eyes show alarm, staring at the kitchen. "What the hell are they doing?"

The contents of one of the satchels is dumped out over the kitchen counter, every kind of tool imaginable, many that are unfamiliar to us. They sort through the pile, choosing things.

At the French doors that lead to the garden, Adam has a cordless screwdriver and a pile of long screws in his hand. He reaches up, drills a screw through the door, into the corner of the door frame. He does the same at the bottom of the door.

He unlocks the doorknob, tries it. The screws hold the door fast. He moves on, to the next door.

In the panic room, Jack stares at the video screens, eyes wide, terrified. He watches them. Can't take his eyes off them. "... locking us in..."

In the library, in the front of the house, David screws shut a window, driving the long screws into its frame. He looks out at the street, at two drunks walking home.

He pulls the drape.

Jack's hands are over his mouth, he's trembling, shaking his head from side to side. This can't be happening.

In the kitchen, Sean goes to the wall phone Jack used to call for pizza earlier. He cuts the phone wire with a knife.

He stands there, staring at the phone, wiping the sweat from his palms on his pants. Not satisfied, he pulls the phone itself out of the wall, cuts the cord for the handset too.

Jack pushes himself back into the corner of the panic room, horrified. Sweat has broken out on his forehead, his whole body seems to vibrate.

Ianto comes over, leans in front of him. "Daddy?"

But Ianto's voice is hollow, seems far away. "Are you okay?"

Jack looks at him. As he watches, Ianto floats away from him. In fact, the entire room is floating away from him, elongating.

And narrowing.

Jack looks to the sides, and the walls don't just seem like they're pushing in on him, they are pushing in on him.

Jack opens his mouth, screams, but no sound comes out.

Ianto stands up and bends over him, but now he's just a figure far away, all the way at the end of a long, impossibly narrow hall.

"DADDY?! DADDY!"

Jack crawls out, into the middle of that hallway, to get away from the wall, but they both continue moving in on him.

"Not here... not here... someplace else... someplace else..." Jack is gasping as his eyes roll back into his head, we see just the whites, and he loses his balance, falling over onto his back.

"Daddy?! Daddy!"

Jack ignores the voice, but there's that voice again, insistent: "Daddy, please!"

There is the sharp sound of a slap, and Jack's face abruptly jerks to the side.

He touches his cheek, confused, as a hot red handprint rises up on it.

What the hell was that?

BAM!

"JACK!"

BAM!

Another one, even louder.

Jack's whole body winces at the sound.

BAM!

A third one, and on this one Jack falls to his knees, and that pounding is real, it's right outside the door, it's like somebody's trying to smash their way right through the wall.

Ianto is right over Jack, holding him by the arms, and that handprint on Jack's face is real, Ianto must have slapped him to try to bring him out of it.

"THEY'RE COMING IN! THEY'RE COMING IN!" Ianto is screaming with fear. "Daddy please!"

Jack looks to the wall, watches it seem to vibrate as another deafening BANG crunches into it from outside.

BAM! BAM! BAM! The sound is deafening.

Ianto throws both hands over his ears.

Jack looks around, still disoriented.

"YOU CAN'T DO THAT! YOU CAN'T FREAK OUT LIKE THAT! YOU HAVE TO STAY HERE WITH ME!" Ianto is getting frantic as he pulls at Jack.

"I am. I'm here." Jack says with more confidence that he feels.

"YOU HAVE TO!"

"I'm here. I'm here." Jack says stronger this time and they huddle there, terrified. Jack blinks, wipes the sweat from his forehead and begins to come back around. He turns his head, sneaks a look at the funny wristwatch Ianto wears, tries to look without his love knowing.

It's not an ordinary watch, it only has one number, a tall, flashing digital display:

 **120**

Jack nods, as if reassuring himself. "We're fine. We're okay."

He turns, looks at the video monitors to see what the hell they're doing out there.

BAM!

In the master bedroom, a claw hammer CRUNCHES into the sheetrock on the outer wall of the panic room.

The intruders are in the master bedroom now, and Adam is like a man possessed, tearing at the sheetrock with the sharp end of the tool while Sean shines a flashlight into the hole.

As the sheetrock tears away, we see the skeleton of the wall behind it. There's a latticework of two by four studs, and beyond those the dull shine of the wall's metal core.

But that's not what he's after. He continues tearing, reveals an air duct running through the wall, feeding into the panic room through a welded hole in the steel. Adam tears away with the hammer, exposing a short section of the duct.

CLANG!

The claw hammer drops into an opened toolbox. Adam drops to his knees, rips open another tool case. This one has a sophisticated looking power drill in it, along with a couple dozen specialized bits. He selects one, twists it into the drill.

At the wall, Adam puts drill to metal and hits the switch. A horrendous METAL SCREECH fills the air and the drill bit tears into the duct, opening up a jagged hole about the size of a quarter.

David hurries through the doorway of the bedroom, carrying a coiled garden hose. Adam snaps his fingers for it, David tosses it to him, holding one end, and the hose uncoils in the air as it snakes across the room.

Adam shoves the end of the garden hose into the hole he's just drilled in the air duct.

RIP!

He tears off a length of duct tape and seals the connection, makes it airtight.

SLIT!

Using a large hunting knife, David hacks a ten foot section of the garden hose off the coil. He stretches it out, across the room, to the white five gallon tank we saw before, which is now sitting on the floor up here. We move in close as Adam snags the cut end of the garden hose over a spigot at the top of the tank.

Red block letters are easy to read on the side of the tank.

PROPANE

CAUTION - FLAMMABLE

Along with a number of other dire warnings.

Adam raises his hand to the knob, hesitates, doesn't really want to do this, but doesn't stop himself either.

He spins it open. Halfway.

"Open it." Sean demands.

"I did." Adam snaps.

"He said open it." David snarls.

"Just sending a message. He'll get the point." Adam mutters as gas hisses through the spigot and into the hose.

We follow along the length of the hose, across the floor of the room, through the hole in the sheetrock, into the hole that's been drilled in the air duct - through the wall itself, where we see the horizontal lines of an air vent up ahead. We squeeze between two of the horizontal lines - and come out in the panic room. Three red streamers, tied to the air vent, flap to life as the gas hisses into the panic room.

Directly underneath the vent, Jack is hunched up against the wall, his arm around Ianto.

He sniffs.

Again.

Ianto sniffs.

They look at each other.

Jack looks up.

Sees the streamers floating above them.

He leaps to his feet, steps up onto a shelf, and stretches his nose toward the streamers.

Just as he does …

Near the tank, David shoves Adam out of the way. "We ain't playin', here."

He cranks the valve handle of the grill open all the way. The gas pours into the hose with an audible WHOOSH.

Jack, at the vent, falls back, two lungfuls of propane, and drops to his knees on the floor.

Ianto panics.


	6. Chapter 6

6

"What, what, what is it?!" Ianto demands with horror.

"On the floor! Get on the floor!" Jack pulls him underneath him, against the floor.

Now Ianto coughs. The gas is pouring into the room.

David is standing guard over the tank, to make sure no one messes with the valve.

"Look, don't be stupid..." Adam begs.

Sean has his head pressed against the door to the panic room, trying to hear any sounds from within. "Be quiet."

"We're trying to scare them, not kill them!" Adam points out.

"They're coughing." Sean says as he listens at the wall.

"They're gonna die in there!" Adam sighs.

"Nobody is gonna die, man, will you please have the balls to follow through with a good idea?" Sean growls, "Think about it, what would you do if you were them, stay in there and choke to death, or come out?! Huh? We're just getting them to come out for forty-five minutes, forty-five fucking minutes! The worst that's gonna happen is they pass out, we drag 'em out here into the fresh air, and they'll be fine."

"Sean, you gigantic idiot, how are we supposed to get into the room if they pass out?" Adam asks politely, a raised eyebrow.

Pause.

Sean turns to David. "Cut it back a little bit."

"No fucking way." David snorts.

"He's right, we can't get into the room if they're dead!" Sean steps closer.

Jack and Ianto are down on the floor, rags covering their mouths, trying like crazy to filter the air, but it's not working.

Ianto is crawling around the base of the wall, near to where he was before, clawing at the strange portal thing again.

Finally, he finds a small metal handle, folded back into the clover-leaf seal on the portal. He unfolds it, twists it.

The portal cranks open, revealing it to be at the end of a tube, about a foot long, an emergency ventilation source directly through to the exterior of the house. He bends down and looks through it. It's covered by a metal mesh at the opposite end, but he can see and smell the outside through it.

He sits up, gestures to his lover to bend down next to him. He does, and they both jam their mouths up near the end of the tube, gulping fresh air greedily.

Jack looks at Ianto, good job, and they both drop to the floor at the portal and suck air. It's temporary, but it works.

In the master bedroom, the debate has turned physical. Adam lunges across the room at David, to get his hands on the valve, to turn off the gas. But David catches him and hurls him aside.

Adam slams into the wall, bounces off and roars at David, who screams right back. Sean leaps into the middle, trying to break it up, to get them to shut up, keep their voices down.

It's bedlam.

In the panic room, Jack knows this can't go on forever. He turns away from the portal, looks up at the vent, where the streamers still stream.

He looks to the other side of the room, to where Ianto found the waterproof matches and lighters.

He thinks.

Takes a deep lungful of fresh air from the tube and crawls over to the lighters.

He selects one, snatches up a screwdriver.

Ianto looks at him, has a vague idea of what he's thinking, but can't believe it. He shakes his head vehemently.

In response, Jack picks up two or three of the fireproof blankets and piles them over Ianto, right up to his disbelieving eyes. He bends down, takes another gulp of air. Kisses Ianto then pulls the blankets up but he's getting woozy. This can't go on much longer.

He staggers across the room, hoists himself back up onto the shelf he stood on before, and gets right up next to the vent. Holding his breath to avoid breathing the toxic gas, he unscrews the vent cover.

The duct is wide enough to put your arm in.

He reaches in, past a bundle of multicolored wires that run down through the wall. He reaches all the way in, lighter in hand.

His hand crawls in, lighter clenched between his fingers. He raises a thumb to the flint wheel, cranks it once.

Too slow. Not even a spark.

His hand shakes. He tries again. Still no spark.

But with the effort and the angle, when he thumbs the lighter it makes his hand twitch, banging up against the sides of the duct with a hollow BOOM.

Adam turns abruptly.

He turns around.

They all freeze, listening.

He hears it again.

The hollow BOOM, coming from inside the wall.

Now a third time.

He walks forward, slowly, toward the wall.

He moves closer, gets right up next to the wall. He leans into the wall, putting his ear right up next to the air duct. This close, he hears the sound in more detail, realizes it's two sounds.

SCRATCH.

BOOM.

He arches an eyebrow.

Jack's hand is trembling, tiring. He tries again, thumbs the flint wheel. It scratches as it rolls, his hand twitches, BOOMS against the side of the duct.

Still, the gas HISSES through.

Jack's face is turning color, he's running out of air. His feet tremble on the shelf, he's about to lose his footing.

He tries again.

SCRATCH. BOOM.

Adam's eyes suddenly pop wide as he identifies the sound. "Oh."

He tears himself away from the wall -

\- Jack's thumb tenses for one good hard turn -

\- Adam leaps through the air, hurling himself toward the propane tank -

\- Jack cranks the wheel, a spark sparks, a flame flames, and a hot blue cloud shoots out in two directions, one toward the panic room, the other toward the bedroom.

Jack jumps off the shelf, throwing himself as far away from the vent as he can, his arm engulfed by licking blue flame.

He drops to the floor of the room, covering his lover's body just as the entire ceiling of the panic room turns into a lake of fire with a deafening WHOOMP.

The fluorescent light tubes EXPLODE, showering glass everywhere.

The blue flame shoots out of the wall, into the hose, through the hose, backing up toward the tank.

Adam crumbles to the floor next to the tank, knocking the other end of the hose away from the spigot just as the blue flame erupts from the end of the hose.

The flame engulfs his entire body, his hair starts on fire, his chest, his arms. David lunges forward, Sean tears the blankets from the bed and throws them over him, Adam howls and rolls on the floor in pain.

The blue cloud on the ceiling suddenly evaporates with another angry WHOOMP, leaving a few little pockets of flame that Jack extinguishes by swatting with a blanket. Only one of the fluorescent lights is left intact; it casts a flickering, uneven light on the room.

He stands in the middle of the still-smoky panic room, breathing hard.

He shouts, roars incomprehensibly, making no sense whatsoever.

He stops, noticing the look Ianto is giving him.

Wide-eyed admiring, frightened, **you are an insane man**.

Jack looks to himself. His arm is singed, the hair burned off. The sleeve of his T-shirt is burned back to the shoulder. His face is sooty, blackened.

Jack grunts, half frightened by himself.

Out in the bedroom, it's worse for Adam, who has lost most of his hair and shirt. But his skin isn't badly burned, which is something, I guess.

Still, he's in a rage. He pounds the metal door of the panic room.

"I'M COMING IN THERE, SON OF A BITCH, I AM COMING IN THERE! I AM COMING IN THERE!" Adam is screaming with rage.

Jack whirls, goes to the door himself, roars right back. We can hardly make out a word he's saying, but it sounds threatening.

Suddenly, he stops, hearing something else.

Outside the door, Adam continues to rant, but there's a second sound, a sound coming from the long wall of the panic room, the wall that's shared with the brownstone next door.

It's a faint - very faint - POUNDING sound, along with a high pitched, complaining voice, so faint it can hardly be heard.

Ianto hears it too. "Neighbor!"

Jack and Ianto leap as one, facing the common wall, SHOUTING at the tops of their lungs - get help, call the police, please, call the police, that sort of thing.

They shout and shout, but the soft pounding continues, and if their voices are as soft on the other side as the voice is on this side, they have no hope.

Their voices crack and they begin to cough, too irritated by the gas to shout for very long. Long after they stop, the soft pounding from next door continues.

Their pleas are not heard.


	7. Chapter 7

7

The Intruders have stopped their racket too, and are listening carefully at the common wall. Eventually, the soft pounding stops, the complaining voice complains no more.

Adam stands there, in pain.

Things are falling apart.

David stands in the doorway, silhouetted by the hallway light. He draws himself up to his full, bulky height. He's big.

"We're gonna talk." David says to Sean "Downstairs."

Sean nods and starts out. David lets him pass, but when Adam tries to follow him, David puts a big hand on his chest stopping him.

"You stay." David snarls "Make sure he don't come out."

Adam swallows. But stays.

David turns, follows Sean downstairs. As he descends, he looks up, making eye contact with Adam. And holding it.

Something on his mind, that's for sure.

.

.

.

.

THUNK.

Jack's head falls back against a wall; he sags to the floor, legs folded in front of him, completely drained.

But Ianto's not drained, Ianto's full of nervous ingenuity, rustling around through the stuff in the panic room, an idea forming in his head. He finds a powerful-looking flashlight and loads it up with batteries.

He tries it, flashing around the room.

Halogen bulb, very powerful, hurts his Cariad's eyes as he flashes it past.

Jack watches him. What's he up to?

Ianto lies on the floor in front of the ventilation tube he discovered earlier. He squints through it.

He can see out of the house, into the courtyard behind the brownstone.

About thirty yards away he can see the backs of the brownstones on the next block, and directly across (because the tube doesn't leave much room for lateral vision) he can see straight into somebody's bedroom.

There's a light on. A man is in bed, an open book on his chest as he snoozes.

Ianto sits back.

He grabs the flashlight, looks for a little button on the top, the kind you can flick the flashlight on and off with. Shining it on the wall of the panic room, he flashes it at a wall, three times, on and off.

Satisfied, he turns back to the tube.

Jack, curious, crawls across the floor to join him. Ianto shoves the flashlight all the way into the tube, leaving enough room on either side of it for them to see through. Jack lays down flat, squints into the tube, Ianto alongside him. Jack looks at his love, curious - your plan?

Ianto reaches into the tube, finds the little flash button on the top of the flashlight.

The piercing halogen beam begins to flash, across the courtyard and into the bedroom of the Man in the bedroom. The light flashes on the wall over his bed.

The flashes are in a rhythm. Short. Short. Short. Long. Long. Long. Short. Short. Short.

Jack turns to Ianto, impressed. "Morse code?"

Dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot.

"Where'd you learn S.O.S.?" Jack asks with awe.

"Titanic."

The flashes continue - dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot. But the Man continues to sleep, the light on the wall behind him has no effect.

Ianto is frustrated.

He adjusts the flashlight.

The beam of light lowers jerkily from the wall until it is shining directly into the Sleeping Man's eyes.

Ianto strains to keep the light in that perfect spot. He's starting to sweat. Jack leans over, sneaks a peek at the watch Ianto wears on his left wrist.

The readout:

 **114**

the Sleeping Man stirs. Opens his eyes. Winces from the light, which is flashing directly in his eyes.

"Got him!" Jack crows.

"Come on, come on..." Ianto pleads.

The Sleeping Man sits up. Raises a hand, trying to block the light, which keeps flashing on him. He gets up, out of bed. He comes to the window.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes..." Jack hisses eagerly.

Ianto keeps it up, flashing faster.

They see the Man come all the way to his window. He leans against it, cups his hands so he can see well. The flashes continue, right on top of him now.

Clearly, the Man is reading the flashes! He takes a step back from the window –

\- gives them the finger –

\- and angrily yanks shut his drapes.

A Moment later, the light goes out and the room is black.

Jack and Ianto drop their heads to the carpet, defeated.

Ianto rolls over, knocks the flashlight away, stares up at the ceiling.

Jack puts a hand in his hair. "It was a good idea Baby."

"We're never getting out of here." Ianto sobs.

"Shhh..." Jack leans in and kisses him softly, letting his hands and lips soothe the nervous Welshman.

He looks at the wristwatch again.

 **103**

He's concerned.

.

.

.

Adam is concerned as well. He's still in the master bedroom, but barely, he's standing in the doorway, straining like hell to hear a conversation that Sean and David are having in the foyer, one floor one.

They're trying to keep their voices down, but stray words float up through the open stairwell - words like "him" and "warning" and "dangerous."

Adam chews a fingernail. If only he could get closer. He throws a look back at the door to the panic room. He looks back out the bedroom door.

Listening.

Sean and David are huddled together in the foyer. They're keeping their voices low, but their conversation is heated.

"We're not gonna do anything about him, he's fine." Sean hisses.

"If you think I'm gonna let my half of the fourteen million bucks slip away because of …" David retorts.

"Half?" Sean yelps, "What did you, take a nap in math class? Three people, three shares, one third. Four point six six six repeating."

"I'm just saying, the man is a problem. And he's your problem. Wasn't my idea to bring him along." David shrugs.

"That's right, David, it wasn't your idea, none of this was your idea, it was mine, it's my family we're ripping off, it's my prick grandfather who built that fucking room, it was my idea to get the plans, I found the floor safe, and it was my idea to ask a guy who builds these rooms to help break into one! Me, me, me, I, I, I, at no point did I say "you" or David," got it?"

"He puts his hands on me again I'll bury a slug in his ear." David warns with finality.

"No, you will not, because without Adam there's no way in hell we're gonna get into that safe, so as far as I'm concerned he can paint your ass blue and run it up a flagpole and you won't lay a finger on him, you understand me?"

"Don't take no tone of voice with me, Homes." David says in a low menacing tone.

"What is this shit you're talking all of a sudden? You're a bus driver, "Homes," you live in Flatbush, so please don't start spouting some Elmore Leonard shit you just heard because I saw that movie too"

Sean and David are visible, still arguing in the foyer.

On the next monitor over, Adam is visible, standing in the master bedroom doorway, listening.

Jack is watching the monitors, thinking. He notices something, sits forward abruptly, looking at the monitor that covers the master bedroom. He squeezes right up close, staring at the screen.

He peers closely at the box next to his bed, the one he was using for a night table. On top of the box, he sees the charger for his cellular phone, sitting empty.

Jack sits back, eyes alive with an idea.

If only he could get to that phone, which must be still under the bed. He looks back at the monitors, at Adam lingering in the doorway to the room.

Damn.

He turns away from the monitors, to check on Ianto, who's settled into a corner of the room, looking pale.

In the bedroom, Adam is desperate. The argument downstairs is entering round two, and he's got to hear what they're saying.

He takes a few steps out of the bedroom -

\- and comes into the hallway. He leans over the stairwell. Where he's standing, he is directly under the camera that covers the hallway -

\- and can't be seen on the monitor that covers the hallway.

Jack turns back from Ianto, to look at the monitors again. He sees Adam is no longer in the bedroom. And doesn't appear to be in the hallway, either.

"Oh yes, yes..." Jack whispers eagerly.

He looks at another monitor.

He sees Sean and David in the foyer.

Jack sits back. That leaves Adam unaccounted for.

... the hell is he?

Adam is still lingering under the camera.

Ianto has come forward to the monitors as well. "Do it."

"Yeah, but where's the third guy?" Jack asks, still scouring the screens.

"Not in the bedroom. Do it!"

Jack goes to the door, raises a hand to the green "open" button.

Hesitates.

We see Adam, lurking in the hallway, just about six feet from the door to the panic room.

Don't open that door!

Jack wipes sweat from his palm. "If it looks like I can't get back, just close the door."

"No."

"Close it!" Jack begs and Ianto nods, looks back to the button.

A shouted curse rises up from downstairs.

Adam takes a step toward the stairs. He suddenly appears, in the hallway.

Ianto sees it. "WAIT!"

Jack freezes.

He looks at the monitor, wide-eyed.

Close one.

Adam can't take it anymore.

Oh, hell...

He turns and takes off down the stairs.

Adam flies down the stairs and appears in the foyer, next to Sean and David.

Jack and Ianto see all three men accounted for, downstairs.

GO GO GO!

Jack leaps up, runs to the door, and punches the green button.

The door begins to crank open, Jack slips through the gap sideways before it's even all the way open. He darts across the room –

\- slides to the floor next to the bed –

\- and flattens himself, reaching underneath it to get the phone.

Damn, that phone slid far, it's right in the middle, wouldn't you know it.

The three men hear his footsteps, as one, they take off for the stairs.

Jack continues to stretch, his fingers inches from the phone.

feet race up toward him -

Jack's fingernails paw the phone, pull it closer to him. He grabs it, stands -

the three men come off the stairs and race toward him, they see him as he lunges across, toward the panic room, he hurls himself through the door -

\- and Ianto SMACKS the red button. The steel door closes with a deafening WHANG.

Safe.


	8. Chapter 8

8

The echo of the metallic WHANG reverberates through the house.

In the panic room, Jack punches 9-1-1 on his cell phone with trembling fingers.

The big empty charger cradle is in the foreground when the three men burst into the room. Adam stops in the middle of the floor, turns in a frantic circle.

"What'd he get, what'd he get, what'd he get... " Adam keeps repeating, then his eyes fall on the empty charger. "Cell phone."

"Shit!" Sean spits.

Jack raises the cell phone to his ear - - and gets a rapid busy signal.

"Oh, no. No, no, no no no no no..." Jack looks at the phone. It's showing just one signal bar, and even that one is flashing on and off. "Oh come on, come on, come on..."

He walks around the room, raises the phone high and low, trying crazily to find a signal.

But can't.

In the bedroom, Adam stands just outside the door, fingertips lightly resting on it, the ghost of a smile on his face. "I don't think we'll be talking on our cell phone from in there..."

Inside the room, Jack doesn't seem upset. Rather, he's staring at the cell phone in his hand, thinking. Remembering something.

Wires...

At the same Moment, Adam is having the same thought. He's still at the door, fingertips still resting there. "Phone..."

"... wires." Jack finishes.

Adam looks down, at the baseboard below. What is he looking at?

Jack steps up, onto the shelf he climbed earlier, and comes up next to the vent.

"What are you doing?" Ianto asks.

"I saw something, I saw..." Jack looks in the vent alongside the duct, he sees the bundle of multicolored wires he saw earlier.

... phone wires!

He jumps down off the shelf, goes to the tools, starts searching for something. "I may not have hooked up the phone in here, but I hooked up the main line, and there's a jack at the base of this wall outside, I saw it!"

Yes, that is correct, there is in fact a jack in the base of the wall outside the door to the panic room.

Adam bends down into frame, studying it, thinking the same thing Jack is. He clears his throat. "Say, while we're on the subject of phones..."

He turns, looks up at Sean.

"When I said cut the line, did you cut the main line at the junction box in the basement like I said, and which I repeated, or did you just cut the cord on the phone in the kitchen?" he asks.

Pause. Swallow. "I, uh, I..."

Shit.

"... hit a little snag finding the one in the basement."

Shit.

Pause. Then, as if a starting gun has been fired, Adam leaps to his feet and races out of the bedroom.

That same starting gun has been fired in the panic room. With a strong rip Jack pulls the whole bundle of multi colored wires out of the wall and drops onto the floor with it. He thrusts it at Ianto, finds a wire cutter in the assorted tools, and gives him that too.

"Strip 'em, expose the ends, try blue first, blue is phones!" Jack barks.

"Blue is phones?" Ianto repeats with confusion.

"Yes, no, I don't know, do 'em all!"

While Ianto goes to work on the wires, Jack turns to the phone itself, the one with the buried phone line that isn't working yet. He rips the phone out of its housing, tears free the wire on the end of it.

Adam flies down the stairs from the third floor, races across the foyer, flies down the stairs to the kitchen floor.

Adam races across the kitchen floor, whips open a door and heads down another, narrow, darkened stairway.

Jack and Ianto are like animals, clawing and tearing at the ends of their respective phone cables, foregoing tools and stripping the wires with fingers and teeth, it's faster.

With the phone receiver cradled on his shoulder, Jack starts twisting the ends of wires onto the exposed ends of the wires from the phone unit.

First wire - nothing.

He tries a second wire.

Adam SLAMS open the door to a dark room, pulls the string on a bare bulb. Burned out. "God damn it!"

Without light, he can't see a thing. He smacks the bulb, it swings wildly, smashes on the cement wall. He turns and races out of the room.

.

.

.

.

Jack tries another wire.

Still no dial tone.

Ianto shoves another wire at him.

He tries again.

Nothing.

He moves on.

.

.

.

.

Adam slides to his knees, snatches a flashlight from his duffel, leaps up and takes off again.

Another wire.

Nothing.

Another wire.

DIAL TONE!

Jack yells and punches 911.

.

.

.

.

.

Adam flies down the stairs, flashlight beam bouncing crazily in front of him.

.

.

.

.

The phone is ringing. An operator picks up.

OPERATOR 911 emergency –

"I'm at 26 West – "

OPERATOR - please hold.

It's a mechanical voice, which gives over to MUZAK.

"NO!"

.

.

.

.

Adam BANGS through the door again, starts searching the darkened mechanical room, shining harsh light around its dingy walls.

.

.

.

.

MUZAK continues to play.

"Damn it!" Jack snarls, no more time to hold. Jack hangs up the phone, dials another number, a seven digit one he knows by heart.

.

.

.

.

In the mechanical room, the bouncing flashlight beam falls on a metal cabinet across the way. Adam runs to it, flings it open.

Circuit breakers.

SLAMS it shut.

.

.

.

.

Jack listens as a phone rings on the other end. And rings. And rings again.

This is torture.

.

.

.

.

Adam turns, sees another, smaller metal box, this one clearly labeled:

PHONES

.

.

.

.

On the other end of the phone, a husky male voice answers; clearly he's been awakened. "Listen to me! There are three –"

.

.

.

.

With a subhuman ROAR of anger, Adam rips the entire phone panel off the wall with his bare hands.

.

.

.

.

.

With an abrupt squeal, the line goes dead. Jack pauses, can't believe it. "Hello? Don't... are..."

He looks up, see Ianto looking at him, his eyebrow arches, his face all hope. Jack keeps his cool, but it take a hell of an effort.

Ianto reads his face. He turns away.

He hangs up the phone.

Ianto goes to a corner of the room, faces away from him.

Jack doesn't know what to say. "He'll do something."

"Uh uh."

"He'll know we're in trouble. He heard me, I said "There are three..." I got that out," Jack says,

"He won't even know who it was."

"What would you think, in the middle of the night? I mean, three what, three bears? He'll call the police." Jack snaps.

"Stop it." Ianto sighs.

"He's just across the park, we're still friends, the counselling ... he'll help us.." Jack begs.

Ianto drop his head into his arms.

"I'm sorry." Jack sighs.

"I'm sorry." Ianto parrots.

"Why?"

"I was trying not to tell you..." Ianto sighs.

"What?"

"I'm dizzy and thirsty." Ianto whispers.

Jack blanches. This is very bad news.

.

.

.

.

.

Tired, Adam drags himself back up the stairs and into the doorway of the master bedroom. David and Sean stand there, staring at him. "He's never coming out."

"Hey." Adam says softly.

"And we're never getting in." Sean growls.

"Do me a favor and don't talk." Adam asks.

"Jesus, what was I thinking?" Sean wails.

.

..

.

.

Jack has torn open one of the water packets and is trying to get Ianto to drink, but the Welshman has gone completely pale and seems to have lost some of the strength in his neck, he's having trouble holding his head up. Most of the water runs down his chin.

"Come on, come on... stay with me... you gotta drink..." He takes Ianto's hand, checks his wristwatch thing. The readout is now

 **82**

He swallows. He grabs Ianto by the face.

"Okay, listen, honey, you went double digit here, you must have been shooting out adrenaline like crazy, we gotta bring your blood sugar back up, okay? Can you hear me?" Jack roars with fear.

"I'm dizzy, not deaf."

"Hey, he's still a smart ass, excellent sign. Did you see any sugar in here? Any candy bars, anything sweet?" he asks.

"Huh uh."

"Okay, you just gotta calm yourself down, that's all, just stay calm and your adrenaline will go back to normal and you'll be fine."

"What if I keep dropping?" Ianto sighs softly.

"Not an option."

"What if I do?"


	9. Chapter 9

9

In the bedroom, Sean has had enough. "We're leaving."

"The hell we are." David snaps.

"Hey man, after all we went through I am not walking out when we're this close" Adam says strongly.

"Close?" Sean gapes, "Are you insane? We're nowhere near close! Fuck this, I'll make an anonymous phone call on Monday, they'll find the floor safe, and I'll inherit the shit. Little piece of it, anyway, it's better than nothing."

"What about us?"

Sean thinks, then pulls out his wallet. He thrusts a fistful of bills at them. "Here. For your time."

They both just stare at him.

"Five hundred bucks here."

Neither one of them moves to take it. Sean shurgs, drops it on the floor. "Suit yourself."

"Nobody leaves." David says.

"Observe." Sean heads for the door, expecting David to block him, but as he draws close - - David just steps out of the way. Sean passes through and heads for the stairs.

"We're not leaving. I'm getting in that room, and I'm opening that safe." David points.

"Lookin' doubtful there, Big Guy, but ten out of ten for attitude." Sean scoffs and he disappears, down the stairs, Adam still pleading with him.

.

.

.

.

Jack rifles the foodstuffs that are stored in the room. Ianto, in the corner, is starting to tremble.

"What if I spazz out?" Ianto whispers with wide eyes.

"No biggie, we've been through it a dozen times, I just jab you with the Glucogen."

Pause.

He keeps looking.

"Where is the Glucogen?" Ianto asks calmly.

"Oh, you know, it's uh... it's in the little fridge in your room."

" I'm sorry, Daddy. "

"Hey, quit apologizing, you're starting to sound like an old Grandma. You're not gonna have an attack. Okay?" Jack tries fake bravado.

"Okay." Ianto lays back, oddly passive, his lips changing color.

He stares at the monitors.

.

.

.

Sean strides into the living room, purposefully. He tosses some tools into his duffel bag and heads for the stairs down to the kitchen.

Adam is behind him. "Would you wait? Would you please just wait a minute?"

But Sean heads down. Adam follows.

David is just coming down from upstairs.

Sean reaches the door of the kitchen, tries to open it, realizes it's screwed shut. He takes out a screwdriver and starts unscrewing the screws.

Adam stops at the stairway. "You walk out that door and you lose your share of the money."

"Yeah, whatever." Sean snorts.

"I mean it!"

"Adios." He gets the last screw out, throws open the door, andablast of wind gusts in, it's a blustery night out there, he takes a step into the doorway - - and with a quiet PFFFT from right behind Adam, a bullet whizzes across the kitchen and hits Sean in the back of the head.

He crumples, right in the open kitchen doorway.

Adam shouts incoherently and turns.

David is standing there, two steps up, a silencer twisted onto the barrel of his gun.

"Nobody leaves."

.

.

.

.

Ianto is staring at the video monitors, eyes wide.

He raises one trembling finger, points at the kitchen monitor, tries to mouth the words, can't.

Jack looks up.

.

.

.

.

Adam is freaking out, but trying to stay calm. "Oh God... oh, my God..."

David walks past him calmly, grabs Sean by the ankles, and drags him back into the house. He turns, looks at Adam, whose jaw is dropped in horror.

"You should see the look on your face."

"The fuck did you do that for?!" Adam says with a shaky voice.

"Fuckin' asshole, thinks he knows me. Drives his German car up to 125th Street a couple of times, buys a few rounds, thinks he's a tough guy, thinks he knows me. (to the corpse) You don't know one thing about me!"

While Adam stares down at the body in shock and David stares at Adam, his back to the outside, a small, thin voice comes from the still-open doorway.

" What the h –"They turn. A man, fourtyish, stands there in hastily thrown on clothes, staring down at the dead body in mute shock.

.

.

.

Jack, watching the monitors with Ianto, gasps as he sees the man, Jack's ex John. While he and Ianto watch - - they see the silent image of John, set upon by David, who grabs him roughly and drags him inside.

Adam hurries to the door - - and SLAMS it shut.

He puts his back to it, thinking, terrified, things are spinning out of control, fast.

David, in the middle of the kitchen floor, is venting some more of his rage on John, whom he has hurled to the floor. He lands a solid boot in the side of John's head, leaving him groaning in pain, completely disoriented.

John rolls groggily into the spreading pool of blood coming from underneath Sean.

"Stop it! Stop it!" Adam cries.

"Who's the clown now? Huh?! Who's the fucking clown now?!" David screams and he pulls his gun, shoves it into Adam's eye, hard, we can hear the faint sizzle of skin burning.

"Me. I am."

" That's right." David leers.

"Burning me. It's burning my eye."

" I have the gun."

"Yes."

"Remember that."

"Please..."

David pulls the gun back, just an inch. The skin around Adam's eye is an angry red. His eyes dart, strain to look over at John, moaning on the floor. And at Sean, dead.

"What? What do you want me to do?" Adam asks.

"What do you think? Get us into that room."

"I can't."

David pushes the gun barrel back into Adam's eye socket. "You can. You're full of ideas. You just need to squeeze one out."

"I can't..."

"You got till the count of three. Then you end up like him." He tilts his head over to Sean, whose brains are spreading out on the kitchen floor.

"One" Squeeze.

"This is ridiculous..."

"Two." Squeeze harder.

"I can't just..."

"Th –"

"Okay, okay! Okay." Adam yells.

"You got an idea?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I got an idea. I gotta check something." Adam assures him.

David grunts, satisfied. Pulls the gun back. Adam slides away, shaking. He bends down, to the floor. He looks at John's left hand. At his index finger.

He sees a white strip of skin, where John wore his wedding ring, until recently.

John, still semi-conscious, is hurled against the metal door of the panic room. He collapses at its base. Adam, bends down next to him.

"Okay, look. I know you can hear me. Your Husband and toy-boy are in there. You're gonna get 'em to come out. Or – " He looks up at David, hulking overhead, gun in hand. "Or I can't stop what he's gonna do. Do you understand?"

John, regaining some semblance of consciousness, nods feebly.

"Good."

Adam stands up, turns to the video camera, and shouts, "OPEN THE GOD DAMN DOOR!"

Ianto and Jack see the horrifying sight on the video monitors.

Adam shouts at the door to the room. "OPEN UP!"

They see Adam, standing over John; they faintly hear him call to them to open the door.

And then they hear another voice, calling back to them.

Ianto sits up, recognizes his lover's ex-husband's voice.

"Him? You got one shot at getting help and you called your ex-fucking partner that you just had a wee affair with?" he asks with open disgust, "His number was the one you remembered?"

John is shouting against the closed door. "DON'T DO IT! NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, DON'T OPEN THE DOOR! DON'T O – "

He's silenced by a vicious kick to the ribs. David begins to beat him.

Adam stands by, powerless, horrifies, watching as David savages John, who continues to call out, as long as he has strength, telling Jack not to open the door, no matter what.


	10. Chapter 10

10

Jack and Ianto shout in horror, he covers his lover's face, turn him away from the screen, screams in incoherent anger of his own.

But he doesn't open the door.

Adam SHOUTS at David, pleading. "STOP IT, MAN, STOP IT! "

But David whips the gun up, into Adam's throat, backing him off, shutting him up.

He resumes his pounding of John.

Adam turns, looks up at the camera in the corner of the room.

He can't stand it anymore. He whips off his jacket, runs to the camera, and covers the lens.

While Jack watches, the monitor that cover the master bedroom abruptly goes black, mercifully sparing them the sight of John's beating.

He holds Ianto, who's sobbing, shaking.

John finally lapses into unconsciousness. David stands over him, chest heaving.

Adam stand in the doorway, neither in nor out of the room, a silhouette, head hung.

.

.

.

Jack tries desperately to see something on the bedroom monitor, but it's hopeless, it's covered. On the hallway monitor, he can just see shadows, as two men in the bedroom lift a third off the floor and carry him across the room.

A sudden BEEPING sound tears his attention away. Still holding Ianto, he pulls him back, off his shoulder.

His face is completely white, his lips blue, his eyes rolled back into his head.

The BEEPING sound grows louder, he checks Ianto's wristwatch, the reading is dire:

 **57**

Jack GASPS, horrified. "Oh God, oh my God..."

Ianto begins to convulse, he bucks right out of Jack's arms and falls back onto the floor of the panic room.

Jack clears everything away from him, tries to make room for him.

The convulsion worsens.

Jack searches through the piles of supplies, comes up with a plastic-handled screwdriver.

He opens Ianto's jaws, wedges the plastic handle between his teeth.

He helps Ianto ride out the convulsion.

Finally, his eyes roll back into his head, he slowly re-orients himself.

Ianto reaches over, turns off his still beeping wristwatch/monitor himself.

Ianto sighs, a shuddering sigh of relief, but he is nowhere near normal.

His skin has passed through white and is turning a sallow yellow color.

He moves his lips, Jack can't hear him, he bends down "You gotta jab me, Daddy my..."

Jack turns, looks back at the monitors. What he sees is good news -

The jacket has been removed from the bedroom camera. Adam and David are gone, the only person there is John, who lies slumped on the far side of the bed.

Jack looks quickly over at the monitor for the living room.

He sees Adam and David having an urgent conversation, Adam sitting in a chair, David pacing in front of him, ranting.

Jack's face lights up, he practically laughs, he's so overjoyed at this turn of events.

He turns, looks back at Ianto, who is starting to tremble again.

That does it.

Jack leaps up, hits the button that controls the steel door, and it starts to crank open, almost impossibly slowly.

Jack steps out of the panic room, into the master bedroom. He looks at John, on the bed. With his back to him he can't even tell if he's alive or dead, but first things must be first, so he turns and races out of the room.

Jack flies up the stairs, bare feet on padded carpet.

In the living room, David looks up, hearing the pitter-pat of the feet on the stairs above.

He smiles and pulls his ski mask back on, to cover his face.

Coming around behind him, we see Adam sitting in the chair. Except it isn't Adam at all, it's John, unconscious, wearing Adam's shirt.

And if John is the person in the chair, that means -

\- the person on the bed in the bedroom is Adam, wearing John's shirt. His eyes pop open, he sits up, sees the wide open door to the panic room.

Jack races into Ianto's bedroom and tears open the door of a mini-fridge. Inside are dozens of little bottles of insulin and something called Glucogen.

He grabs a bottle of Glucogen and a black leather pouch and takes off.

As Jack nears the bottom of the stairs, he sees a horrifying sight. It's David, ski mask over his face, standing in the doorway of the master bedroom.

He screams, he slams the door, he takes off down the hall, reaches the end, throws the door open - and races into the master bedroom, where David is motoring, fast, headed for the panic room, where he can already see Adam, standing in the middle of the open doorway, in front of Ianto, wearing John's shirt and a grim "tricked you" expression.

Jack hurls himself at David, lands clinging to his back. He claws and wrestles with him, gets one hand on his ski mask, tears it from his head. He reaches up to try to stop him from pulling it off –

\- His gun slips from his fingers, falls to the floor –

\- And bounces off his boot, spinning across the floor away from them.

David flips him off his back violently, he slams to the floor, clutching his mask and getting a good long look at his face. He makes a move toward his gun, but he's faster, he's already pawing himself frantically across the hardwood toward it.

David measures the distance, knows he'll lose, and sprints for the panic room instead. Jack turns, looks down at the medicine in his hands, then at the door to the panic room, where David is right now reaching up to push the button that controls the steel door.

He makes a fast decision and lunges, hurling the plastic bottle of Glucogen and the black leather pouch through the gap just before - - the spring-loaded steel door slams shut with tremendous ferocity.

And then it's silent.

Jack wails in agony, pounds on the door.

He stands back, chest heaving, sobbing.

A looooong Moment goes by.

Finally, a voice comes over the house's intercom system. " **If you leave the house, we'll kill him**."

Jack sobs.

 **If I see a uniform in the house, we'll kill him.**

"Oh... oh..." Jack wails.

 **You understand?**

Jack looks up at the camera in the master bedroom. He nods, terrified.

Adam pushes past David, at the speaker button, and leans forward. He's approaching exhaustion. " **I just... I just need forty-five minutes.** "

David stands behind him, muttering to himself. "Saw my face, man. Saw my face."

We see Jack's face, agonized, as he lunges toward the camera, screaming something up at it, the same thing, over and over. But in here his voice is nearly muted, what bleeds through the walls isn't enough to be heard.

David looks at his image on the monitor, irritated.

Shut up.

We abruptly hear his voice, full-throated. "- cine, he needs the MEDICINE! GIVE HIM THE – "

Ianto shivers in a corner, knees pulled up to his chest, staring at the intruders, scared out of his wits, and looking very, very sick.

Adam looks at him, musters the most reassuring face he can come up with under the circumstances. "It's gonna be cool, kid. Be outta here before you know it."

No response from Ianto. Adam cocks a head, really looking at him. "Are you okay?"

"Hurry up, for Christ's sake!" Davis barks and Adam turns, grabs his satchel, and drops to his knees in the middle of the floor. Over his shoulder, we can see the face of Jack on one of the monitors, shouting into the camera, begging them to give Ianto his medicine.

Using his hand, Adam measures six lengths in from the wall, then digs his fingernails into the weave of the carpet, looking for a seam.

He finds one, gets hold of it on one edge, and runs his other hand along the seam till he finds a place where it seems to turn a corner. He stands, hovering over the carpet, and pulls back evenly with both hands.

The concealed carpet flap pulls back neatly, with the soft sound of tearing velcro. Underneath the flap - - is the smooth metal door of a floor safe.

Adam unsnaps his satchel and gives it a shove. It rolls out and opens up onto the floor, revealing a neat array of safecracking tools.

He begins his delicate work, but is suddenly jarred by a pounding on the metal door. He turns, annoyed. Jack is still screaming outside the door.

"The hell does he want?" Adam asks.

"I don't know, he keeps screamin' the same thing over and over." Sean says with amusement.

Adam turns, looks at the monitors.

Jack is staring up at the camera, miming the act of giving himself an injection in the arm.

David laughs. "Drugs. He wants drugs. What the fuck?"

But Adam thinks.

His eyes fall on the bottle and the leather pouch he hurled through the door, then whip over to Ianto, who sags over into a fetal position on the floor.

His lips are moving.

"Oh, man..." Adam whispers. He crawls over to Ianto, puts his ear down next to Ianto's lips. "What is it?"

Ianto tries to summon enough strength to speak, but his breath comes hard. "I need..."

"Yeah?"

"... 'jection..."

"An injection?' Adam guesses.

Ianto nods. Adam points to the pouch and the Glucogen, on the floor nearby. "That stuff?"

Ianto nods again.

"Can you do it yourself?'

Ianto shakes his head no.

"Well, I don't know how."

Ianto looks at him, eyes pleading.

David stands behind Adam. "I don't fucking believe this. (to Ianto) You gotta wait."

Ianto just looks at Adam. "Please."

"Yeah, just like a half hour, maybe a little more, and your sugar daddy'll give it to you. You can wait a half hour, can't you? "

"Yeah." Davis nods, "He can. He's fine, he's just like, tired, he's gotta rest. You rest, Kid. Half an hour. "

Ianto looks terrified, shaking his head no.

"Come on."

He starts to pull Adam away, but Adam shakes his hand off, violently. He bends down very close to Ianto's lips. "Tell me the truth, okay? What's gonna happen if you don't get this?"

Ianto swallows, licks his cracking lips. When he speaks, it's breathy, almost inaudible. But the words are clear. "Coma. Die."


	11. Chapter 11

11

Jack paces in the master bedroom, out of his mind with worry, no idea how to communicate to the people in the room the desperate situation.

Suddenly, a voice comes over the intercom speaker.

 **I understand. I'll give him the shot.**

A hand comes down and picks up the Glucogen and the leather pouch. Adam stands, looking down at them.

David grabs him, pulls him to the far end of the room. "You're wasting your fucking time, man, you're wasting my time. You don't know how to do this, and the longer we stay in here, the more likely he's gonna lose it and call the cops!"

"Are you gonna open the safe?"

David looks at him.

"Then shut up and get out of my way." As Adam crosses the room, David makes eye contact with Ianto, who is staring at him.

"Don't look at me."

Adam drops to his knees next to Ianto and unzips the pouch. "Okay, boy, all I know about this is what I've seen on TV, you gotta talk me through it."

Ianto tries to form words, but he's too weak.

Adam swallows. "Okay. No talking. No problem. TV don't lie, right?"

He reaches into the pouch, take out a syringe, a sterile pad, and a length of rubber tubing. He takes Ianto's arm, stretches it out, exposing the underside of his forearm. "You seem like a good guy. Your fella... only saw him for a second, but, whoa. Handsome, huh? "

No answer. Adam ties the rubber tubing around Ianto's arm, pulls it tight. "Hey, nod or something, show me you're still alive, will ya?"

Ianto nods.

"Atta boy. That too tight?"

Ianto shakes his head no. Adam takes the syringe, starts to fill it from the Glucogen bottle.

"You guys are pretty rich, huh?" Ianto shrugs. While Adam goes through the process of finding an exposed vein and giving the injection itself, he goes on, as much to comfort Ianto as to comfort himself "Yeah, you don't think about that stuff. Good for you."

He looks at him, sees him looking at him. Thinking about him.

"I know, I know. I really screwed the pooch this time. I never did anything like this before. Break into somebody's house? Not even close. Bad cards, buddy. I swear to God, I been on the wrong end of maybe six straight years of bad cards. House. Car. Wife. (snaps his fingers - gone) Those are some seriously bad cards. And still, every time I pick up a fresh hand I swear to God, the rush comes so hot and prickly I feel it right down to my toes because this time, this one time, it might be there, this time it might be that hand, that perfect hand, that monster hand. (shakes his head) And you thought you were sick."

The shot successfully given, he pulls Ianto's sleeve back down. "Feel better?"

Ianto nods, and he seems better already. Adam helps him to sit up, to lean against the wall.

"Woulda been a hell of a dad."

.

.

.

.

A voice comes over the intercom in the master bedroom. It's David.

 **He's okay. Now sit down and wait.**

Jack is hugely relieved.

And extremely pissed off.

He goes to the corner of the room and picks up the gun, the one that David dropped.

He heads downstairs.

.

.

.

Sparks fly as Adam goes to work on the floor safe with a small, specialized drill.

David bends down next to him. "Congratulations. You saved his life for ten minutes."

Adam looks up at him - what? But David turns and walks away.

Adam goes back to work.

.

.

.

Jack is in the living room, with John, who is still slouched in the chair. He's in awful shape, barely conscious.

Out of the silence, a sudden, deafening sound.

The DOORBELL.

His eyes go wide.

He darts a look over to the door (the one that leads to the stoop, not the bloody kitchen door downstairs), then back at John.

"Police." John rasps out feebly.

" You called the police?"

He nods. "You... scared..."

Shit. This is exactly what he prayed for him to do, now it's the worst thing that could happen.

He stands, thinking, desperate. He walks toward the door, stops, thinks some more.

The doorbell RINGS again.

He comes up with a plan. He goes back to where John is in the chair, pulls the chair back a few feet, out of view of the door. He puts the gun in his lap, puts his hand over it to steady it.

He leans down, whispers to him. "Don't. Say. A word."

He nods.

Jack takes a breath, walks across the foyer, tousling his hair as he goes.

David is staring at the monitors, aghast. "Holy shit... holy shit..."

Adam races over, looks over his shoulder.

One monitor covers the front stoop, and on that monitor they can clearly see two cops.

"He's fuckin' crazy, he killed the boy! He just killed his own lover!"

"It's not his fault, it's not his fault, the guy must have called them. Look, look, look, he's telling us."

He points to another monitor, the one in the foyer, where Jack is looking up at the camera, miming to them - don't worry, I'll take care of this.

"He's gonna handle it."

"He better."

.

.

.

.

Jack's shaking hand rises up to the doorknob and pulls open the big front door. On the stoop, the two Cops turn to look at him.

He acts as if he's just been awakened. He looks it, too, still in T-shirt and boxer shorts. The wind is gusty and cold outside.

"Yeah?"

"Everything okay?" asks a thin male officer.

"Huh?"

"Are you all right?"

"What are you guys - what time is it?" Jack blinks and yawns.

" 'Bout four o'clock. "

"I don't get it." Jack frowns at them.

"We got a call..." a young female officer starts to talk and the other one silences her with a look.

Andy looks at her.

Gwen stops talking.

"Somebody called you?" Jack frowns.

"Can we come in?" the Andy asks softly.

"What do you want?"

"We'd like to come in"

"No, you can't come in."

" Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Can we come in?"

"Stop asking me that. I'm fine. Who called you?" Jack shows anger.

"You don't look so good."

"You wake me out of a sound sleep at four in the morning and then tell me I look like hell? Of course I look like hell, you don't look so hot yourself, buddy. I'm freezing here, thank you for checking, can I go?"

Andy studies him, notices the burned sleeve of the T-shirt, the black smudges still on his face.

"Your husband says you said "There are three..." right before you got cut off."

"Oh, that phone call..." Jack laughs, "And it's Ex. Has been for eight years!"

Andy takes a step forward and lowers his voice to just above a whisper, unconsciously making him lean forward in order to hear him.

"Sir, if there's something you want to say to us right now that maybe you can't say to us right now, maybe you just want to make a signal, by blinking a few times, something like that."

Jack just looks at him. Wow, this guy's intuitive. He is sorely tempted. But he can't.

"That's something you could do. Safely."

Jack thinks, thinks - and burst out laughing.

"Man, you are good! You mean, like, if somebody was in the house or something? That's great, they really train you guys these days, don't they?" Jack smiled disarmingly as he moves to one side.

Andy looks at him, not sure if he believes him or not.

"No. I'm fine. Cross my heart."

Gwen turns to go, but Andy lingers.

"May I ask what the rest of that sentence was going to be?"

"Huh?"

"The sentence that started "There are three." What was the rest?" Andy asks.

Pause.

He stares at him. "Okay, look. My lover and I almost broke up because that bastard sent pictures of us to Ianto's phone showing us in … well. It took a while before he would believe they were old photos and forgive me. Not stupid see, knows they were not _that_ old. Came looking and found me drunk and almost passed out with the ex. It's my first night in the new house, and I was feeling a little lonely and a little drunk because even with this new expensive house he won't let me back in his bed. The sentence, if you insist on knowing, was going to be "There are three things I'll do to you if you ever come between Ianto and me again."

Gwen stifles a laugh.

"But thank God I came to my senses before I said all that and hung up instead, so nobody would ever know what I was thinking, unless, of course, two officers showed up in the middle of the night to interrogate me about it."

That was good. Andy is embarrassed. Gwen thinks it's funny.

"You want him to tell you which three things, Andy, or should we just go?" the Gwen finally asks her partner.

Andy looks at Jack, a long look, he holds it for one last Moment, trying to read his mind.

In the room, on the monitors they see the video image of the Cops as they turn and head away down the front steps. Jack closes the doors, looks up into a camera, right at them.

Adam and David breathe a sigh of relief.


	12. Chapter 12

12

Adam goes back to work on the safe. He's making progress.

David looks at Ianto. Stares actually. He's thinking too.

Bad thoughts.

He moves over, crouches down next to Adam. "He saw my face. The toy boy too."

Ianto overhears that.

He raises his head, alarmed.

Adam turns, looks over at him, and he just gets his head back down in time. Adam and David close themselves off, for a private conversation.

Ianto edges closer. He overhears a fragment.

"That's your problem." Adam whispers.

"That's their problem." David sneers back.

Ianto is terrified. Doesn't know what to do. He looks to his immediate left, sees the intercom panel. He edges closer.

"Let me fucking finish this so we can get out of here." Adam demands with annoyance.

"You finish. Then we finish."

Ianto sneaks up a hand and pushes a button - "ALL PAGE."

In the living room, there is an audible CLICK as the speaker is activated. Jack looks up, hears Adam's voice, in the middle of a sentence.

" **\- posed to mean?"**

" **You're here with me, you're already on the hook for one. Buy one, you get the rest for the same price. You know that."**

" **Get the fuck away from me. "**

" **The Toy Boy in here. The other two when we come out."**

Jack listens, horrified.

Ianto holds the intercom button down with a trembling finger.

" **Bullshit."**

" **You know how this gotta end."**

Jack stares, in shock, as David's voice echoes in the empty room.

" **They stay in the house."**

There in an abrupt click, and the speaker turns off. Jack turns, goes to John, falls to his knees, no idea what to do. He holds him close, their foreheads touching. He's terrified, exhausted, wants to collapse in his arms.

Instead, he starts to pull the gun from his fingers.

John tightens his grip, what are you doing? He tries to hold onto the gun, but Jack pulls his fingers off it, takes it away from him. He is too weak to resist.

In the panic room, Ianto has his hands clamped over his ears, his mouth is wide open, and a hideous shriek seems to be coming out of it.

But the noise is actually coming from the safe, where Adam continues to work, another drill, a bigger bit. The noise is deafening.

Ianto sees his Cariad approaching the monitor in the bedroom, carrying a jacket. Jack tosses the jacket, this time he doesn't want them to see what he's doing.

The monitor goes black.

In the master bedroom, Jack pulls on a pair of jeans that are hanging over a chair.

He steps into a pair of boots.

He shoves the gun into his belt.

Here in the bedroom, he can hear the drill. From the house next door, he hears pounding again, yelling.

Apparently the neighbor can hear the drill too.

Jack looks from the walls of the bedroom to the walls of the panic room.

His eyes light up with an idea.

He goes to the front wall of the bedroom, stands with his back against the exterior wall (street side), with his left shoulder against the common wall that's shared with the neighbor's brownstone.

He begins to step off the distance, heel to toe, measuring with his feet until he reaches the metal door that is the entrance to the panic room.

Fourteen.

He hurries out of the bedroom.

What's he doing?

Jack comes into a small room full of empty bookshelves, a library. There is a window that looks out over the sidewalk, one floor up, same level as the stoop.

He looks up, into the corners of the room. "No camera, no camera, no camera..."

They're bare, no video cameras. Good.

He goes to the window, tries to open it.

Screwed shut, of course.

.

.

.

.

The safe is almost cracked. David is watching the monitors carefully.

We see Jack as he searches through the tools in the living room, finds a screwdriver, a sledgehammer.

David furrows his brow. Now what?

Jack is back in the library, hurriedly unscrewing the window. He gets the last screw out, shoves the window up.

The wind blasts in, it's a hell of a spooky night out there.

He leans out the window. The sidewalk is empty. He's one floor up. To his right is the house's front stoop.

He tosses the sledgehammer over, onto the stoop.

Climbs up onto the window ledge, and slithers out himself.

He edges along the ledge, hops down onto the stoop, and freezes, staring in horror - at the video camera that covers the front stoop.

He is staring straight up at the camera, clearly standing on the front stoop, outside the house, where he was specifically told not to go.

Ianto sees the image of him on the stoop.

David happens to be looking away at the moment, at the safe, but he starts to turn around, to look at the monitors again - and Ianto kicks him, hard, in the ass.

"Hey!"

He turns, away from the monitors.

"Sorry. Can't control it sometimes."

David scowls at him. Behind him Jack darts down the front steps and disappears from view on the monitor.

Ianto sees his lover go. "Won't happen again."

.

.

.

Still leaning out the window, we can see Jack from here as he reaches the sidewalk and runs up the front steps of the neighbor's house, which is contiguous.

Straining to see. Ianto sees Jack all the way at the right edge of the frame, as he shifts the gun to the back of his pants and knocks on the neighbor's door, sledgehammer held slightly behind his leg.

After a long moment, the neighbor's front door open.

The conversation begins. The wind is gusting, we can't make out the details, but the gist is clear - let me into your house, and don't ask me a lot of questions.

The neighbor - and by the tone of the voice it sounds like an old woman - is slow to respond, grumpy.

Losing patience, Jack just pulls the Neighbor out of the way and shoves into the house. The Neighbor stumbles out onto her front stoop, and we were right, it's an old lady in a nightgown, but she's no shrinking violet.

In fact, she's royally pissed off and not at all intimidated. "What the hell do you think you're doing, young man?!"

She storms back into her house, following Jack. As both of them disappear from the frame, we move out of the library, into the foyer, and move along the common wall, the one shared with the neighbor's brownstone.

From the other side of the wall, we can hear muffled voices, arguing, Jack and the Neighbor shouting at each other.

We drift up, up the stairs, and hear the thundering of footsteps on the stairs next door. We keep pace with them, from inside this house. We pass right through the floor - and rise up out of the floor in the master bedroom, and now we can hear the conversation on the other side of the wall in here, the Neighbor's fearful, angry tones, Jack's firm, urgent declarations.

We move with Jack, even though we can't see him, we know what he's doing, he's stepping off the paces on the other side of the wall. We drift down that wall, fourteen steps, until we reach the metal door to the panic room, then we pass through that door - - and arrive inside the panic room, where Adam is this close to getting the safe open, when all of a sudden –

WHOMP.

CRUNCH.

Adam and David freeze, alarmed. It's coming from the long wall, the shared wall.

They look at each other.

WHOMP.

CRUNCH.

They look at the wall.

Somebody is on the other side, pounding like hell.

"The walls are steel, right?" David asks.

"Not that one." Adam whispers with awe.

"NOT THAT ONE?!"

"Hey man, it's the neighbor's house, who breaks in through the neighbor's house?!"

WHOMP!

CRUNCH!

Louder. Closer.

Adam turns, screams at the wall. "WHO THE FUCK BREAKS IN THROUGH THE NEIGHBOR'S HOUSE?!"

"We've got the toy boy!" David is shouting at the wall "WE'VE GOT YOUR FUCK TOY! What the fuck is he thinking?!"

WHOMP!

CRUNCH!

"He's got your gun, that's what he's thinking! The FUCK you had to bring a gun for?!"

Adam throws himself back on the floor, goes back to work on the safe. Fires up the drill again, it SCREAMS into the metal. "Almost there..."

The POUNDING keeps up from next door.

We hear sheetrock torn away on the far side.

Bricks, SCRAPING out of place.

Ianto, in the corner, is energized, excited.

While Adam and David are distracted, he grabs the leather pouch, palms the three syringes that are left in there.

ALMOST THERE...


	13. Chapter 13

13

Finally, the door to the safe crunches in on one side, yielding to the drilling - - at the very moment that the head of a sledgehammer crashes through the wall of the panic room.

David grabs hold of Ianto, Adam maintains his focus, throwing open the safe, revealing - - nothing.

CRUNCH!

The sledgehammer head strikes again, opening up a hole about a foot across. Light spills through from the other side, as well as the voice of the hysterical Neighbor.

David hurls Ianto against the far wall, leaps over to the side of the hole, and waits, poised above it.

At the safe, Adam doesn't lose his cool, just opens a false bottom in the safe, revealing a manila envelope.

He snatches it up, RIPS it open, and his eyes dance as he holds up fourteen individual one million dollar U,S, Treasury Bearer Bonds. He fans them out, eyes drinking from his Grail.

BANG!

A gunshot whizzes right through one of the bonds, setting it aflame before it SLAMS into the far wall, sending up a little cloud of plaster dust.

JESUS!

He whirls, sees an arm poking through the hole in the wall, gun extended.

But David is standing just above the hole, and already has his boot raised, over the hand. He brings it down, a crushing blow that stomps right on Jack's wrist.

Jack cries out, loses his grip on the gun, and it clatter into the space between the houses.

BETWEEN THE WALLS

The gun falls into oblivion, the space between the walls, where no one can get to it.

Adam shoves the loose bonds into his jacket. "I GOT THE MONEY, LET'S GO! "

David grabs Ianto and turns, jabs the green button to open the door.

Behind them, Jack roars in anger and wriggles through the opening. Before he's even all the way through, he gets hold of David's leg and pulls himself into the panic room, scraping and bloodying himself on the edges of the too small hole.

"GO, LET'S GO, OUTTA HERE!" Adam yells but David is deep in a violent rage. Still holding Ianto with one hand, he bends down, grabs Jack by the hair, and drags him toward the doorway.

"YOU KNOW HOW THIS IS GONNA GO!" David screams

"FUCK YOU, I'M GONE!" Adam spits and he bolts out of the room, through the metal door, which is just finishing its slow crank open, its heavy spring coiling in the wall.

David drags Jack across the floor by the hair, right into the track of the open steel door.

Jack looks up, sees the infrared safety beam over his head, and realizes with horror what his intention is.

Still with one arm holding Ianto, who is kicking and struggling viciously, David holds Jack's head down on the floor, below the safety beam that would prevent the door from closing. He reaches for the "close" button.

Ianto raises his arm, his hand stuffed with three syringes, and jabs them into David's neck.

David screams in pain.

Jack manages to raise his head, breaking the beam.

On the stairwell, Adam, stops, frozen, his face twitching with indecision.

He hears the murder taking place just above him.

He runs down three steps.

Stops again.

Runs down the rest of the stairs.

David stretches to push the red "close" button for the door, but he has to hold Jack's head down, out of the lower beam with one hand, all with Ianto savagely attacking him at the same time, and three syringes hanging out of his neck.

Finally, he gets Jack's head all the way down, onto the floor.

Looking up, Jack sees the red beam become complete again.

David jabs the button - - just as Ianto throws his hand into the upper beam, the one at shoulder level. Ianto's hand turns red, the beam is broken, the door will not close.

David roars in anger and twists violently, sending Ianto flying across the room.

Jack strains, gets his head off the floor again, breaking the beam. David starts jamming the close button, over and over again, the beam completes, then breaks, completes, then breaks, never the button and the beam at the same time.

But it can't go on forever. Jack's tiring, he can't keep it up, his head trembles - - and collapses onto the floor.

The beam completes - - David SMACKS the red button - - and Adam appears on the other side of the door. He reaches in, grabs hold of David, to pull him off Jack, but David loses his balance, falls forward - into the gap - - and his head is crushed by the spring-loaded steel door that slams forward just as Jack draws himself back.

Jack falls across the panic room, grabs Ianto, and holds on tight.

The door detects the obstruction and opens again, slowly.

David's body slumps to the floor, dead.

Adam stands there, looking down at Jack and Ianto.

They stare at each other, wordless, their first face to face contact. He sees the bonds protruding from his jacket. He just looks at him. There will be no understanding here.

He zips his jacket, turns, and hurries away.

Adam races down the steps, hurries to the entry door, throws it open - - and finds a gun barrel pointed directly into his nose.

He blinks, tries to focus on whoever's on the other end of that gun.

It's the Cop, the first Cop, the one who came to the door and was so suspicious of Jack. Andy looks down, sees blood smeared all over Adam's jacket, sees more than enough to know his suspicions were correct.

"Put your hands up."

Adam freezes, silhouetted in the doorway. Wind and leaves blow into the house, a real gale outside.

From behind Andy , all at once, must be a half dozen of 'em there, but Adam can't see anything in the stinging light, and can't hear much either, over the roaring wind.

Adam moves suddenly, flinging the door shut right in Andy's face. The door slams hard, Adam turns to run but doesn't get more than a few paces before three sharp gunshots slam through the door behind him.

Brilliant white light spills through the bullet holes in the door, but it's not the light that gets you, it's the chunks of lead. They rip through Adam's back and come out his chest, a triangle pattern.

Adam stops, sags to his knees. He reaches into his jacket, pulls out the loose stack of bonds.

He fans them out, stares down at them, holds them like playing cards.

Behind him, the front door bursts open, half a dozen cops appear and start shouting, all at once.

Adam tosses the bonds to the floor, the same gesture as folding a hand of poker.

He groans and collapses, slowly, falling through the bonds, twisting as he goes down. He falls onto his back in the foyer as the wind gusts through the open door, scoops the bonds up off the floor, and blows them back into the house, as if they were never meant to leave.

Adam lies there on the floor, eyes open, staring up at the ceiling, looking at the bonds that swirl in the blast of air, suspended there, twisting and bucking and diving just over his head as he dies.

.

.

.

…..

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.

.

The swirling bonds melt into swirling leaves, blowing in the air over Central Park on a crisp fall day.

But on a day like this the Great Lawn's full of people, throwing frisbees, playing football, lying there doing nothing.

The leaves land on the grass next to Jack and Ianto, stretched out on a blanket, a newspaper spread in front of them, open to the ads.

Jack is on his back, arms folded behind his head, staring up at the clouds.

Ianto is intent on the paper, circling the occasional ad. "I mean, uptown is close to your work, but somebody at my work said the Village is really cool, so... I don't know, it's so great to be close to the park and everything... What do you think, I mean, give me a clue, here, where are we gonna live?"

Jack rolls over, props himself up on one elbow. He seems years younger. He looks at Ianto, reaches out, brushes his husband's cheek, the new wedding band glinting in the sun.

He smiles.

He is calm.

"You choose baby."

Behind him, a flock of pigeons takes off, leaping into the clear autumn sky.

END


End file.
